


Returning the Favour

by Rairora



Series: The Favour [2]
Category: John Wick (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Sequel, off-canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:34:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 37,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28156143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rairora/pseuds/Rairora
Summary: This is a sequel to my other work, 'The Favour', so please start there.It's unapologetically off-canon and takes off after the first film, winding through its own narrative.Anna Quinn owed John Wick - and now the slate has been wiped clean. All that remains for her to do is to wait till he returns.But the way he returns the favour owed is not what she expected.
Relationships: Helen Wick/John Wick, John Wick/Original Female Character(s)
Series: The Favour [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2064033
Comments: 26
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

Dan Parsons lay beside Annika and by the light of his bedside lamp, he watched her sleep.  
In truth, he saw little more than the top of her head because she liked to roll over to the edge of the bed, wrapped in the comforter. He resisted the urge to stroke the tuft of dark hair that stuck out over the top of the blanket, knowing that, at his touch, she would violently wake from sleep, pushing him away as though his touch were an electric shock. The first time he'd done it, they'd frightened each other almost to death. Since then, he'd taken her advice and approached her with caution when she was asleep.

It was just one of her little quirks.  
In actual fact, there were other things he found odd about her but she always laughed them off when he mentioned them. Like her ability to pick a lock, for example.  
One night they'd been stuck outside his door in pouring rain when he realised he'd probably left his keys at work. He'd already been on the phone, trying to call his sister, his ex-wife, someone with a spare set of keys that was still awake after midnight. But even as he was scrolling through his contacts, she'd extracted a bit of bent wire from her jacket pocket and had poked around at the lock till there was a small click and the door had opened. She'd tried to put the wire back in her pocket without him seeing it, but he'd gently wrestled it out of her small hands and turned it over in his large ones. It had been a big paper clip and, based on the scratches on the metal, it was not the first time it had been used for this purpose.

"Where did you learn to do that?" he asked, astonished.  
She'd laughed and taken the twisted paper clip back, slipping it into her pocket.  
"My criminal past," she intoned solemnly. "Way back when I was a cat burglar."  
And she'd tugged his sleeve, pulling him inside so she could slip her cold hands under his jacket, stroking and teasing him till that little niggling thought – the snagged nail, the unravelling stitch – was forgotten.

Dan leaned over and opened the drawer of his bedside table and silently extracted the ring box. Making sure she was still asleep, he opened the lid carefully and looked at the ring inside. It was simple, a white gold band with three square-cut diamonds no wider than the band itself. Very plain, very discreet. He hadn't really meant to buy it: he'd been stuck in traffic outside Finch's Jewelry Store and he'd looked over at their engagement ring display. Something inside him moved, like a cog sliding into gear, and he suddenly knew that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. He'd parked the car and ran inside before his courage deserted him, spotted the right ring in the first tray and paid for it on the spot.  
And then he hid the ring box for nearly a month.

He'd spoken to a few people about it, unable to make a decision without wondering whether he was being crazy. Stupid. He'd only known Annika for eleven months, they'd only dated for three of them.  
But what did they say? _If you know, you know._  
That's what his sister kept saying, delighted to see him happy again for the first time since his divorce.  
And his ex-wife Amanda said much the same thing: leaning over the garden fence to admire the ring, she called over her new husband for a look. The burden of their well-wishing had lain heavily on his shoulders: his ex-wife would finally be able to be unmitigatedly happy in his presence, not embarrassed by how much more content she was with her new husband, feeling sorry for him for not having found the same.  
"It's not too soon, hon," she said. She'd started calling him _hon_ since they divorced, a kind of pitying term of endearment. "If she's the right girl for you, you'll know. And then what does it matter whether you get married now or next year or in two years? Do it. Be happy!"

Only his friend Mike had reservations.  
"How well do you know her, man?" he'd asked over a beer.  
"I feel like we're ..." Dan searched for the words. He wasn't good with all that mushy crap. "We're like ... soulmates. It's like she's my perfect partner. We like so much of the same stuff, it's unreal."  
Mike shrugged.  
"Don't you think we make a good couple?" Dan asked.  
"Sure you do," Mike said and he drank deep. "It's just that ..."  
He thought about it for a second.  
"It's like you're _too_ perfect, know what I mean? Like she's trying to be who you want her to be all the time but I dunno if that's who she really is. I can't explain it, man, but sometimes I think she's just ..."  
Mike trailed off, unable or unwilling to finish his train of thought.  
_He thinks she's just faking it,_ Dan thought. 

And he quickly quashed the thought because if he poked at it too long, he was afraid he might uncover something he didn't want to know.  
He bought Mike another beer to show there were no hard feelings, brushing against the ring box in his inner pocket as he reached for his wallet.

xxx

Annika – Anna, Eileen, Annie – watched him from beneath the blanket, saw the little red box returned to the drawer and the lamp switched off.  
She waited till she heard the deep, steady breathing that indicated he was asleep before she rolled over and stretched. 

She'd known about the little red box for a couple of weeks.  
Dan wasn't very good at deceit or subterfuge. He was also pretty useless when it came to hiding crap. On one of her pretend trips to the bathroom she'd sneaked into the bedroom, avoiding the floorboards that would creak and let him know downstairs that she was prowling around in his room, and had searched his bureau till she found what she'd feared he'd been hiding. Stomach sinking, she'd realised that the end of her relationship with Dan – nice, placid, uncomplicated Dan – had already been set in motion, as though someone had turned an hourglass upside-down, the sand slipping through the glass rapidly, counting the hours, the minutes, the seconds, till she would have to disappear.

It had saddened her more than it should have: she hadn't intended to like him as much as she did. He had been a stop-gap, a distraction, and by accident it had become much more. After all, she'd waited for John for more than a year – a year without any contact, without a phone call, a text or an email. Her only contact was Mr Charon at the Continental, who'd reluctantly agreed to call her on the fifteenth of every month.  
"Three minutes, no more," he said at the beginning of each call and then in a whisper updated her with what he knew: the Chinese. The Russians. John had been seen, he had been injured.  
Some months he had nothing to tell her; once he had barely said hello before he hung up immediately, presumably because Winston had been nearby. She'd hoped he would call back.  
He hadn't.  
That had been a long month.

Then, out of the blue, Charon called her early one morning – not on the fifteenth, nowhere near the fifteenth, in fact, - and whispered down the phone, "It is done! He is free!"  
"What – ?" Anna managed to say before he hung up.

She stood beside her bed in her tiny one-bedroom apartment and her heart swelled with elation. She pulled on her jogging shoes and went for a run, her mind pounding out a "Yes! Yes! Yes!" in rhythm with her feet on the pavement. Should she quit her job immediately? She had to give one month's notice, but maybe Muriel would waive that. Or maybe she should wait. Wait till John showed up at her door, called her up, turned up in the book store. Anna felt she couldn't wait, but she had to. John would turn up, she just had to be patient till he sorted his shit out. But she still wanted to swing out of a lamp-post like that corny old scene in _Singin' in the Rain_. Too bad that was one of the few days in Seattle when it wasn't actually raining.  
_Oh, well,_ she'd thought, _never mind!_

And then she waited.  
And waited.  
And waited some more, the days dragging.  
When she phoned Charon he was cagey at first – he didn't know anything, he hadn't heard from John - but when she phoned him a month later, he sounded genuinely perplexed.  
No, he still hadn't heard from him.  
The third month, Charon used his three minutes to clear his throat discreetly and tell her that he would now cease to call her unless so requested by Mr Wick. John Wick had disappeared again and until he chose to reappear, their conversations were futile.

That was it.  
Anna/Annika was left in her Seattle limbo, waiting for a man to turn up, one who didn't seem to be in any particular hurry to do so. And the months passed without this changing, causing her initial elation to turn to impatience. Then to disappointment. Then to anger.  
And when she got to anger, she'd finally given in and gone on a date with Dan Parsons. Just one. Just a coffee. That was all.

He was a carpenter, a friend of her boss, and his patient, old-fashioned wooing as well as her unswerving deflection of his attentions had garnered her far more attention than she had wanted. Her boss, Muriel, and a couple of the other women who worked in the book store had been so enchanted by Dan's steadfast dedication – bringing her the cupcakes she'd mentioned she liked, looking at every cook book in her section, leaving a rose by her cash desk – that they had formed a little cheer-leading group behind him, nagging Anna to go on a date with him till, through a smile that was little more than a baring of clenched teeth, she agreed.

To her surprise, she had enjoyed herself.  
Dan was a bear of a man, tall and blond, with blunt, calloused hands. He was surprisingly gentle and sappily romantic, something he would never have admitted to. He called himself "just a regular guy," as though this explained everything there was to know about him. He liked a quiet life, he enjoyed watching football, he drank beer with his friends – he had a lot of friends with names like Mike, Dave, Bill, Tom – and most of all he liked to hang out with his very large family which, bizarrely (Anna found), also included his ex-wife and her new husband.  
He was, quite simply, the most amiable man she'd ever met. 

Even his ex-wife thought so.  
"Annika, hon, Dave's just the best," she'd told Anna at one of the Parsons' large barbecues and she delivered the pronouncement without a trace of irony. "Seriously, the _best_."  
Anna was inclined to agree. He was a really nice guy.

On reflection, what Anna really fell in love with was his family: the easy dinners with his parents that ended up with a full house, as his brothers and cousins and friends dropped by, delighted to have an excuse for a gathering, a beer, a chat. Dan's mother thought she was darling, so pretty, so smart, and she told her so often. Mrs Parsons had his colouring, the same reddish-blond hair and pink cheeks that flushed with excitement when a story was being recounted and the entire family became caught up in epic arguments about trivial details. Was the guy who sold Dad the Camino in 1979 from Tacoma or Olympia? They took sides with far more enthusiasm than necessary, fighting with spirited shouting and good-natured jibes as though establishing his hometown was somehow pivotal to the anecdote, rather than a side-note. 

Anna had never known a family like this; actually Ann Finnerty had never really known much of a family at all.  
And it had sucked her in, it was like a drug – the warmth, the acceptance, the hugs from his mom. She was expected to be a loving girlfriend to the besotted Dan, because in his world _everyone_ was loving and sweet to one another, and before she properly realised what she was doing, she found herself sitting through football games and making fruit pies. 

Her ability to act - and to Google - had never been put to the test as vigorously as they were in her time with Dan: she learned overnight the rules of football. She watched YouTube videos to learn how to make an apple pie, a peach cobbler. She turned herself into the kind of girlfriend Dan wanted, the kind of girlfriend his family expected: sweet little Annika, a little ray of sunshine. 

Farewell Anna Quinn, contract killer.

xxx

Dan stirred in his sleep, kicking the comforter off.  
Solicitously, she pulled it back up. Anna glanced over at her watch on the bedside table. Since she'd left the business, she'd gotten back into the habit of taking her watch off at night. When you were working, you never took your watch off because you mightn't have time to put it back on. Just thinking about it, she reached over and strapped the worn leather around her wrist.

And that's when she heard it, the sound.  
She sat up in bed, straining her ears. With Dan gently snoring beside her, she slid out of the bed and pressed to the wall so the floorboards wouldn't creak, she slipped out of the room.

There it was again. It was coming from the kitchen.  
_It could be a mouse,_ she thought. _Or a... or a..._  
Another little creak.

 _Shitshitshitshitshit,_ she thought.  
She didn't have a gun. There was nothing in the hall that she could use as a weapon, except a battered umbrella, which she was afraid to pick up in case its rustling would alert the person in the kitchen to her presence.  
She crept to the door. It was open a crack, a centimetre or two.  
Anna pressed her eye against it and saw a figure in the kitchen. Small, probably a woman.

As she watched, the woman turned and she almost shrank back, then she saw that the other woman was illuminated by the light of her phone. She was smiling as she flipped her finger against the screen, scrolling rapidly up.  
Anna pushed the door open and hit the light switch.  
"Are you fucking serious?" she snapped, her voice a low snarl.  
The other woman scrambled to put her phone on the counter and pull out her gun.  
"Are you fucking serious?" Anna repeated. "What the fuck? Are you Facebooking on a job? Sending fucking text messages? Don't tell me you're supposed to be fucking Agency-trained?"

The woman was young, in her early twenties.  
_As young as I was when I started,_ Anna thought. _It's probably one of her first jobs._  
She was black, a little bit heavy-set, muscular. She looked familiar and it took Anna a couple of minutes to remember who she reminded her of.  
"So - are you Agency-trained? What's your name?" Anna repeated in her best teacher voice: sharp, no-nonsense.  
It seemed to do the trick, rattling the girl back to her senses.  
"I'm Kenya Washington," she said a touch cheekily. "Not that that matters. And yes, I am Agency-trained," and she swept a hand downwards to indicate her clothing.  
Black pants, black top, smart black blazer. The unofficial Agency uniform.

"You related to Kesha Washington?" Anna asked through narrowed eyes.  
"Yeah, I am," the woman said. "I'm her niece, Kenya. You trained with her, right?"

Anna moved slowly into the kitchen, deliberately not going near the knife block by the sink. She watched Kenya's eyes flicker towards the knives and back to her.  
"You should know you never take your phone out on the job," Anna continued in the same stern tone. "Until the job is finished. You never get distracted on the job, you never take your eyes off the target."  
"Yes, ma'am," Kenya answered sarcastically. "Now the lesson is over, it's time for me to finish the job so I can get back to my WhatsApp. That's what people are using nowadays," she added sarcastically. "Facebook is so yesterday, bitch."  
Anna inched along the counter-top. Kenya's gun followed her.  
"Where's your silencer?" she asked. "You forgot the silencer, _bitch_."

Kenya looked at her gun and up at Anna, who kept her eyes on her, continuing: "You are so dumb, woman. How did you pass training? What are you going to do? Shoot me? You'll wake everyone in the house. And what will you do then? Shoot them all? Who's going to clean up? You think you can get a reservation for dinner in the Seattle suburbs?"  
Anna watched the young woman mentally flick through her options.  
"I'm gonna shoot you and get out of here," Kenya said sullenly. "So shut your piehole."  
"Yeah," Anna said. "Good luck with that. You're not wearing gloves, you dumbass. Your prints are everywhere."

Anna saw a thin sheen of sweat on Kenya's forehead. Her hands were no longer that steady on the holster.  
_Seriously,_ she thought, _had standards slipped so much since she finished her training?_  
"Who sent you?" Anna demanded.  
Kenya sneered, her mouth twisting into a thin smile as she realised the trump card she held.  
"Your boyfrien', that's who. That's right, girl, I got sent here by no other than _John Wick_."

Anna felt a sensation like a blow to her ribcage.  
Temporarily winded, she looked at the other woman, who sensed she'd once again regained the upper hand. Kenya cocked the gun with more than a trace of arrogance.  
"Liar," Anna hissed.  
"You wanna see the contract?" Kenya said. "I was just goin' to come in and kill you quietly, girl, but you are such a pain in the ass, I think you deserve to die knowing your precious John Wick wants you dead."  
Wordlessly, she picked up her phone and, watching Anna with one eye, scrolled till she found what she wanted and tapped the screen.  
"Look at that, if you please."  
She slid the phone over the kitchen island.

Anna picked it up and looked at the PDF on the screen. It was a copy of a telefax – the Agency still used fax machines, for crying out loud.  
_Status: Closed contract,_ she read. _Agent: Washington, Kenya. Subject: Quinn, Anna. Denomination: $150,000._  
_I've gone down in value,_ Anna thought wryly. _I used to be worth more than a million._  
Aloud she said, "Nothing here that indicates John Wick has anything to do with it."  
Kenya rolled her eyes. "Scroll down, bitch," she said in a tone of weary exasperation.  
Anna scrolled down.  
_Assigner: Wick, John._  
She scrolled to the bottom of the fax, looking for his ID, the number only he could use.  
_001-01 – USA, New York,_ she translated in her head. _333 – payment in advance. 145 – closed contract._  
And then her heart caught as she read the final digits in the list of numbers at the bottom of the page:  
130-91, his agent number.  
Hers was 130-97. Five others graduated before her, those five were now all dead.

Anna slowly placed the phone on the island and gave it a little push.  
The other woman watched her as she leaned on the island, her two hands gripping the sides as though to steady herself, her head bowed. Kenya stretched out a hand to take back her phone.  
"You gonna come outside with me," she said and "I'm gonna – "

Suddenly Anna looked up, her eyes dark with fury. She thrust a hand under the kitchen island and extracted a heavy metal hammer. Before Kenya could react, Anna whacked the meat tenderizer off her fingers, breaking the screen of her phone and smashing the bones with a sickening crack. Kenya shrieked, dropping her gun to nurse her fingers. Anna snatched it up and aimed it at the other woman.  
"You have about two minutes to get out of here before this kitchen is full of people," she said. "Go, now. And you can tell that shithead John Wick that he'd better crawl back into that hole he's been hiding in because Anna Quinn is coming to kick his fucking ass."  
Nursing her fingers, tears streaming down her face, Kenya slipped out the back door, even as Anna heard Dan's heavy footsteps on the stairs.

She shoved the phone and the gun in the bread bin and quickly picked up the heavy metal hammer.  
"Annika!" Dan shouted from the hallway. "You all right?"  
She winced as she prepared to do what she had to do.  
"Fine!" she called brightly. "Just brushed against the meat tenderizer-thingie in the darkness and it fell on my toes."

She dropped it and swore silently as it bounced off her foot.  
When Dan opened the door, she was gripping her toes, her face blanched in pain.  
That it hurt like hell was the only thing she didn't have to lie about that night.


	2. Chapter 2

"Well," Anna hissed down the phone. "Have you found it, Winston?"  
She pressed herself against Dan's winter coat. It smelled of woodsmoke; he'd probably been wearing it when he and his dad had been out burning leaves and clearing deadwood.  
"Is it there?" she said.  
She heard the click-click-click of Winston's keyboard. She could picture him at his desk in the room behind the club, a stack of ledgers next to him and a glass of Earl Grey on a china saucer by the mouse pad. It was the middle of the night in New York, early morning in Seattle, but she knew Winston would be awake, keeping an eye on the business conducted to the background music of his jazz singer in the club. Meanwhile, in Seattkem Dan was crashing around the kitchen, frying a breakfast whose smell already nauseated her. 

"Patience, little bird," Winston murmured.  
"The phone is smashed beyond repair," she said, "and I can't remember the contact number, but it was recent – maybe only a couple of days old - and it was in John's name. She had a PDF of it on her phone and she –"  
"Found it," Winston said dully.  
"And what - ?"  
"Hush a moment, little bird, and let me read it."  
Anna pressed against the coats, biting her lip.  
"It appears to be real," he said slowly. "It is certainly in the database and the status is currently closed. It was phoned in by Wick, the contract was faxed to the Agency from an unknown location and identified against his ID number. A deposit was transferred to the Agency the same day."  
"From his account?"  
"A cash deposit."  
"And who took the call?"  
"An operator called Rosamund, a new girl. She wouldn't recognise his voice – before you ask."  
"So it could have been anyone," Anna concluded.  
"Anyone who knows his number, knows your number and has his handwriting," Winston said. "Because it does look like his signature. Faxed in, of course, which would make a forgery harder to detect."  
"But why?" she whispered. "Why would he do this?"

It was the question that she couldn't shake: why would he do it?   
And, she thought grimly, on a related note: why do I always fall for men who want to kill me?

"Anna, it is beyond me," Winston said and she heard the genuine confusion in his voice. "I have not seen him in months. Charon heard a rumour that he was setting up in Puerto Rico, something I found quite hard to believe, but one never knows. But he hasn't been in contact with me since ... well, since everything finished."  
He coughed discreetly. What had started with the death of a puppy had somehow spiralled out of control, in a way no one could have predicted. Anna didn't know what had happened in her time in exile, she only knew what Charon was willing to divulge in his monthly phone call. And as Charon's loyalty was primarily to Winston and The Continental, what she was allowed to learn was sparse, at the very least.

"There is one thing," Winston said, "but I fear you may not like it. There were rumours that he... Well, there were rumours about a woman."  
"A woman?" Anna said.  
"Yes, little bird – and before you react with your customary Irish ... eh... vivacity, I would like to remind you that these are just rumours. You asked me why he might take out a contract – if this is, indeed our Jonathan's work – and I feel compelled to mention this possibility."  
"So you think John might have sent an agent after me because he's hooked up with some bitch and he wants me out of the picture?" she said, her voice rising to a screech.  
"Anna," Winston said, "Now, Anna, these are just rumours. Temper your response, my dear."  
"I'll give you temper – " she began and abruptly stopped when someone banged on the door of the closet.  
"Are you in there, Annika?" Dan called.  
"Yes, sweetie, there in a minute," she replied. "Just searching for a hat I left here last time."

She waited a second or two, holding her phone away from her ear.  
"Who was that, sweetie?" Winston asked archly.  
Anna sighed. "My boyfriend," she admitted. "Of sorts. Kind of."  
"And you are displeased because he may or may not have a lady friend. _Hmmm._ "  
It was a long and low _hmmm._ , and it spoke volumes.  
"It's complicated," she said weakly.  
"You want to know why Jonathan may have put out a contract on you?" Winston asked. "Well, little bird, you just might have your answer right there."

"I think I've found it," Dan said, opening the door. In his hand he held her green woollen hat. "You left it by the boots and stuff."  
"Thanks, babe," she said, giving him her warmest smile. "Just on the phone to my dentist, be out in a second."  
"Your dentist?" Winston said in her ear. "Interesting."  
She ignored him.   
"Why didn't he come after me himself? Why send that newb? It makes no sense."  
"None of this makes sense," Winston said. "But I would recommend that you ask him yourself. And soon. In two days the contract opens to all takers and the premium goes up to a quarter of a million. Not on a par with your previous price tag, to be sure, but enough to be tempting for some."  
She heard him tapping on his keyboard.  
"Thanks, Winston," she said weakly.

"And one final word of advice," he said, "if you have any ... feelings for your boyfriend, I would recommend that you get out of there fast. It would appear that his address is listed as your location, along with a few other pertinent details. Daniel James Parsons, is that correct? Son of Daniel Senior and Linda, née Rivers, Parsons?"  
Something plunged to the pit of her stomach and a cold sweat broke out on her back.  
"Yes," she whispered.  
"Time to spread your wings, little bird," Winston said sombrely, "and fly far, far away."

xxx

"Why were you hiding in the closet?" Dan said, grinning at her. "Are you having an affair with your dentist, or what?"  
Anna thought rapidly.  
"No," she said, leaning against the kitchen counter she had frantically scrubbed and wiped while Dan had been in the shower. "It was my mom."

Dan narrowed his eyes in confusion.   
"You said your mom was dead," he said.  
"Yeah, well, I lied," she said shortly. "She has been dead to me for a long time, but technically, she's alive. Or, I should say, she's dying."

He put down the dishcloth and shook his head slowly, as though it would help him hear better.  
"So, wait now, you told me your mom died of a drug overdose. Now it turns out that she's alive somewhere in ... "  
"... in Boston."  
"... in Boston and now she really _is_ dying?"  
"Look," Anna said, grabbing one of his hands. She turned it over in hers. His hands were big, the skin was rough and reddened, scarred and calloused. John's hands were narrow and smooth, long fingers and clean nails. Dan's nails were chewed to the quick and often dirty; one of his hands could comfortably circle both of hers.

"Look," she started again. "My mom and I ... we had a really bad relationship. She wasn't much of a mom. When I was 17, I ran away from home and from that point on, I never spoke to her again. When I said she'd overdosed, it was because I really thought she must've overdosed by now. I'm just as surprised as you are that she's still alive."  
Dan's face crumpled in sympathy. She'd told him about her childhood – her real childhood – and it had horrified him, the child of doting parents. He reached out to pull her close but she pulled him gently away.  
"Anyway," she said, "apparently she's dying. Of cancer. And she's in residential care."  
"A hospice?" Dan asked gently.  
"I guess so. She wants me to come back for a few weeks, the last weeks. And I said I would."  
"Of course," he said, trying to wrap his arms around her. Anna wriggled out of his grip and he looked hurt.  
"It's just a lot – " she began, "- a lot to process. I just need a bit of space."  
"Sure, sure," he murmured.  
"I'm going to go home and pack a bag," she said. "I'm going to try to fly out this evening."  
"Of course," he said and then added "I can go with you, Annie. We can go through this together."  
She looked at his face, his open, honest face, and said, "Thank you, Dan, but I'm afraid I have to do this alone."  
He nodded.

And she hated herself.


	3. Chapter 3

Maria Carmen stood behind the curtain and watched the man below.  
He was working in the small yard behind his house, the gate thrown open to the street, a canopy providing a little shade in the afternoon sun. He had parts of the motorbike laid out neatly around him and he was kneeling on an old mat on the bare concrete, his hands on his knees, completely still as he surveyed the parts in front of him and thought about his next step. As though he could sense her eyes, he turned his head slightly and glanced up at her house. She shrank behind the cotton drapes until he'd turned his attention back to the bike.

The house beside them had been empty for six months, her mother had been beginning to despair that they'd never find a tenant; San Luis had once been a popular tourist resort but its popularity had declined when a huge hotel opened in the next village. Now it functioned as a commuter town for San Jacinto, which not only had the hotel, but a more attractive beach and a better preserved old town. San Luis' nightlife had become complacent, its bars somewhat dingy, and it no longer had that many tourists passing through. 

All the more reason it was surprising that the American had thought to stay, and stay so long at that. He'd rented the house from Marie Carmen's mother for a month. Then extended it to two. Now he had passed the three-month mark and didn't seem in any rush to leave. Which suited Marie Carmen just fine. She liked to look at him from her secret vantage point, watch his musician's hands pick up and turn over pieces of metal, turning screwdrivers and wrenches with almost delicate precision. He'd long since finished repairing his own bike; he was now repairing mopeds and motorbikes belonging to other villagers. He never charged anyone, just accepted a bottle of rum or some home-cooked dish with a quaint little half-bow.  
The gifts disappeared into his house; Marie Carmen had no idea if he ever ate or drank them.

As she watched, he leaned back on his heels and ran his fingers through his long hair.  
Marie Carmen's mother grumbled under her breath when she saw him – one of those American beach bums. Hairy, dirty man, should get a haircut, should shave! At least he looked better now than he had when he arrived, she'd said, white like death, that narrow face gaunt and wan. Now he had a bit of colour to be sure, he no longer looked like he'd escaped from the morgue.  
"Mama!" Marie Carmen would hiss, never sure how much Spanish the American understood.  
To his face, her mama smiled at his heavily-accented Spanish and took the rent (cash, always in a white envelope as though it were a gift).  
" _Gracias, Señor Black,_ " she'd say. " _Muchas gracias._ "  
And John Black would incline his head in that funny way of his, casting his brown eyes down to the floor, suddenly awkward or shy.

It drove Marie Carmen wild.  
He was so not her type: about twenty years older than any Puerto Rican guy she'd dream of dating, but there was something about him that fascinated her. He always looked serious but on the rare occasion that he smiled, his face lit up and his hand flew up to cover his mouth.   
_So cute,_ she thought. _Oh, my God._  
So different from the loud, swaggering guys her age. Their tenant was quiet, gentlemanly, holding the gate open when she left the house, he always greeted her politely but never asked where she was going, or where she'd been – no small talk, no trivial enquiries.  
He simply smiled at her, said hello, and turned back to his work.  
She'd asked him openly, blatantly, why he was in Puerto Rico and he'd told her he was a writer. He was working on a novel. He'd come here for peace and quiet. Yet, he never seemed to do much work: when he wasn't out on his motorbike, exploring the island, he was kneeling on the hard ground of the small yard, patiently repairing her cousin Tito's bike or fixing Lucia's moped. He was on friendly terms with everyone but had no friends.  
No girlfriend, either.  
At least, none that he ever mentioned.

One evening when he came back from one of his long rides somewhere along the coast, she'd waylaid him at the wrought iron gate to his yard and brazenly asked him out for a drink. He'd looked at her, his dark eyes narrowing a fraction, then shook his head with a rueful smile.  
"Thanks," he said, "but I'm not very social."  
He'd taken off his helmet and jacket and she smelled his sweat and the unmistakable scent of sea-salt. Had he been swimming?  
"How can you live in Puerto Rico and not want to go out for some dancing? For a little drink?" she'd wheedled, a hand on her hip.  
She tossed her dark hair and pushed her bosom out cheekily. He'd laughed, shaking his head so his hair fell into his eyes.  
"No, thank you," he repeated. "I think I'm just too old for that kind of thing."  
"You're never too old!" she protested, but he just laughed his deep laugh and pushed the gate open, his arm stretching past her face.  
She saw the muscles move under his tanned skin and she felt weak.  
"See you, Marie Carmen," he said in his quiet way and went inside, pulling the gate shut behind him.

So when she was supposed to be studying for college, she liked to sit by the window, hidden by the curtain and watch him instead.  
He was the reason she was failing her accountancy course; her mama would kill her when she got her grades at the end of the semester. She watched him walk barefoot around the small yard, his movements graceful, the soles of his feet black from the dust and motor oil. And she bit her lip when he lifted the hem of his t-shirt to wipe his brow, exposing his stomach for a couple of seconds: he had a scar that ran down between his ribs, a thin line of white against his tan. Instinctively her fingers stroked the cotton drape as though that allowed her to touch his skin, before shrinking back, flustered and guilty. 

One day he'd absent-mindedly wiped a hand on his shirt, smearing it with oil. She saw him frown briefly in annoyance, then pulled the t-shirt off, turning it inside out to mop his face. Marie Carmen gripped the flimsy material of the curtain as he slowly turned around, looking for somewhere to toss it. She held her breath when she saw his back: he was tattooed across his shoulders. She couldn't quite make out some of the motifs, but she saw a cross, two praying hands and some words she didn't understand. _Fortuna_ something.  
" _Dios mios,_ " she whispered and grabbed a pen to write it down.  
But he was already striding inside; he returned moments later in a new shirt.

Marie Carmen sneaked into her mama's room and turned on their old PC. The internet connection was slow, she had to wait for the thing to splutter to life before she could type in what she'd written down:  
_Fortuna fortuna adv_  
It was automatically corrected to _Fortis Fortuna adiuvat_. She clicked on its translation into Spanish and English.  
" _La fortuna favorece al audaz,_ " she whispered. "Fortune favours the bold."  
How strange that a man as gentle – as meek – as John Black should have something like this tattooed across his back, she wondered.  
_Bold?_ she thought, switching the computer off. The last word she would use to describe that man was bold.

"You okay, baby?" her mama enquired, peering around the door.  
"Just looking up something - " she began but her words were drowned out by the sound of John revving the motorcycle's engine.  
Mama tsk-tsked.  
"You want that I tell him not to do that when you're studying?" she asked.  
"No!" Marie Carmen cried. "I mean, no, no need. He's our tenant, we don't want to get into his bad books. It's okay."  
"Something weird about him," Mama said, peering out her window. She had to lean a little further out to see into his yard and she made no effort to hide herself. "Always playing around with those bikes. He should be out drinking, eating, enjoying some woman's company, like every other normal American tourist."  
"Maybe he's gay?" Marie Carmen said. _Por favor, no,_ she prayed.  
"He's not," Mama said decisively. "I already asked him."  
" _Mama!_ " she cried, scandalised. "You did not!"  
"I did," she said. "He said no, so I said, why are you single? What's wrong with you? And he said - oh, never mind."  
"What did he say?" Marie Carmen said. It came out like a plea, she couldn't help it. Her mother looked at her sharply.  
"He said his girlfriend cheated on him. He came back from somewhere and found her with another man. So he's taking a break from relationships."  
"He just told you that?"  
"Well, I had to work on him a little bit to get the full story, but yes, he told me. Eventually," Mama said proudly. "So I said he should go out and do a little salsa, drink a little rum, have a little fun ... shave that dirty beard, cut his hair ..."  
"Ma- _maaa!_ " Marie Carmen wailed.  
"It's true, he looks like a homeless man. Who would want to touch that?"  
_Me_ , Marie Carmen thought. _Me! I want to touch that!_  
"Anyway," her mother said, yanking at the bed cover to straighten it. " _A mí, plín_. I don't care. As long as he pays his rent, I guess it's better he lives like a monk than has a string of nasty _chicas_ in and out of my house. Back to your books," she added and Marie Carmen returned to her room.

When she looked out the window, he was gone.  
She sat at her desk and opened his accountancy book, picked up her pen.  
I wonder what kind of woman would cheat on a man like John Black? she thought. She glanced down at her book, momentarily guilty.  
_Oh, well,_ she reasoned, _I'm failing anyway._  
She pushed the book away and thought about John, doodling _Fortis Fortuna adiuvat_ all over her notebook.


	4. Chapter 4

"Aurelio," Anna said raising her hands as though she wanted to surrender, "Auri, calm down. Just chill. Everything's good, man."

Aurelio was looking at her as though he'd seen a ghost.   
Which, effectively, he had.  
"Are you fucking kidding me?" he said, his voice hoarse. "Is this a fucking hoax?"  
He picked up an empty beer bottle and flung it at her head. Anna ducked and it smashed off the wall behind her.  
"Are you fucking serious, Anna Quinn?" he said raising his voice. "ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME?"

His voice reached a roar and he punctuated it by flinging another bottle. She ducked behind a packing box but he stomped after her.  
"Do you know," he said, poking her chest with the tip of his index finger, "do you know I mourned you? I got Fr Flaherty to say masses for your fucking soul. For your soul, Quinn, for your fucking _soul_."  
He balled his fingers and pressed them to his mouth.  
"You lucky I don't hit women," he muttered, " 'cause I _really_ wanna punch you in the face right now."  
"Go ahead," Anna said humbly, "I deserve it. Wouldn't be the first time I took a punch."  
Aurelio seemed to consider it, then turned away.  
"Nah," he said finally.

Anna looked around his tiny apartment.   
The shelves were empty, the rickety old sofa she's slept on the last time she was there was gone. Instead, six packing boxes were stacked in the middle of the room, ready for removal.  
"You got a new place, Auri?" she asked conversationally.  
Back still turned to her, he raised a hand like a traffic cop.   
"You need to shut your piehole for a while, Quinn," he said. "I'm still processing this."  
"Sure," she whispered and sank down by the wall till she was sitting cross-legged on the ground. She made herself small and waited.

"So," Aurelio said, opening a beer and handing it to her. "You bin in Seattle all this time?"  
She'd been allowed to get up and join him at the breakfast bar. She'd asked for something to eat, but he'd snorted in derision and given her a beer instead. When he opened the fridge, she noticed there was nothing else inside.  
"Yeah," she said. "I got a job and settled down. The way you do."  
"Uh-huh," he said. "The way you do, uh-huh. And where's John?"  
She glanced at him sharply. "If anyone knows where John is, it's you."  
"Why you say that?" he asked casually.   
She noticed he wouldn't meet her eye.  
"You've got his dog, Auri, there's dog hair everywhere in this place. And I bet you've got his car somewhere safe too."  
Aurelio drank deep.  
"Yeah, well," he said.   
Anna waited for him to say more but apparently Yeah, well counted as a full sentence.

"Speaking of the dog, where is he?"  
"He's at my fiancée's house," he said. "We're movin' in together. You lucky I came by today, most of my shit is at her place. Just leavin' this crap here till the end of the month."  
"Fiancée?" Anna repeated with a whistle. "And who's the lucky girl?"  
Aurelio sighed. "Friend of Rosalia," he said.  
"Your _sister_ Rosalia?" Anna said. "Who is it? Does she work at The Continental?"  
"Yeah," he said reluctantly. "Ginger."

Anna whooped.   
"Ginger!" she cried. "Ginger Alessandri agreed to go out with – no, wait, she agreed to _marry_ you? What magic did you work, man?"  
Aurelio eyed her coldly.   
"Met her at your funeral, bitch. I was so upset that she bought me a drink afterwards. The rest, as they say, is history."  
Anna bowed her head, scraping the label off her bottle with a fingernail.  
"Once again, Aurelio, I am really, really sorry."  
"Yeah, well," he said again.   
And again, that was it.

Before he left to go back to Ginger's house, he opened one of the boxes and took out a blanket, throwing it at her. It smelled of dog and Anna winced involuntarily.  
"That or nothing," Aurelio said.  
"No problem," she said humbly.   
It would take a while to get back into his good books.  
"You outta here by tomorrow morning," he said and it wasn't a question.  
"Sure," she said. "I just need to know – I need to know where John is."  
"Bitch, I done telling you this: I don't know. Truly, I do not know."  
"Winston mentioned Puerto Rico ..."  
"Nice place," Aurelio said cutting her off. "Great beaches. Great rum."  
He patted his jacket pocket for his car keys.   
"Good luck, Quinn."  
"Is he in Puerto Rico?" she asked, grabbing his sleeve. "Just give me that, Auri. Puerto Rico, yes or no?"  
"I. Don't. Know," he said, shaking her off.  
"The last time you saw him," she begged, "where was he? Where was he going?"

Aurelio sighed and turned around. "You really wanna know?"  
"Yes!"  
"Last time I saw him, he was heading to Vermont. To his in-laws."  
She gaped at him, her mouth open.  
"His in-laws?"  
"Yup," he said. "He said he needed to see Helen's mom and dad. He said they were the only family he had left. So if you're looking for him, I suggest you go there. Tell 'em you're their dead daughter's husband's lover and see if they can shed any light on his current location."  
She shook her head slowly.   
"Damn, Aurelio, you're mean," she complained.  
He shrugged.   
"Yeah, well," he said again. But this time he added, "Seriously, bitch? Considering what you put me through, you earned it."


	5. Chapter 5

John had intended to visit Helen's parents for longer, but after two days he found their company more of a burden than the healing he had sought. They, on the other hand, had been devastated when he announced his intention to leave.

"But, John," Helen's mother had said, "where on earth will you go?"  
He'd glanced at her and looked away. She looked like an older version of her daughter, like one of those composite pictures used by police to show how a missing person might age. He couldn't look at her too long; it hurt too much.

"I'm not sure, Catherine," he answered – glance up, make eye contact, look away, look away – "but I guess it's time to look into getting a house somewhere."  
"Have you thought of Vermont?" her father had said. "We've been happy here."  
"As happy as can be expected," her mother murmured.

After Helen's death, they had sold Helen's childhood home and retired to Vermont. They'd bought a picturesque little house outside Montpelier: Helen's mother took classes at the College of Fine Arts and her father, David, a retired professor of economics, contributed articles to newspapers and websites. Their new home was tastefully decorated with the quintessence of their previous life: their favourite Persian rug. The cushion covers they'd picked up in Morocco. Some of their beloved pieces of heavy Shaker furniture. Previously, their vast collections of books, vinyl records, old maps and paintings had been spread around a very large house that had high ceilings and airy windows; in their new home everything was stacked against walls and threatened to topple off shelves. And although they had photos of their daughter everywhere – as a child, as a teen, as an adult, as John's wife - there was nothing in their home that reminded John of who Helen had been, no trace of her love of clean lines and white simplicity. No ghosts. No memories.   
Whatever he had looked for, it wasn't there.

After only two days, her parents' home had felt claustrophobic and cluttered, and he had to get out. He'd made his excuses and, despite their disappointment, he knew they'd understood. David had shook his hand, pumping it with more energy than necessary, and Catherine had given him a hug, dampening the shoulder of his shirt with her tears.

"She loved you so much," she'd cried. "You were the best thing that ever happened to her."  
He'd swallowed. The pain of Helen's loss was swelling inside him again.  
"She was the best thing that every happened to me," he answered gruffly.   
Her mother patted his face and asked him again, "Where will you go, John? I'll be so worried about you."  
And spontaneously, seeing one of their honeymoon photos in a silver frame on the mantelpiece, he'd said, "I might go to Puerto Rico."  
The idea seemed to make sense to them. They nodded their assent and, with one last hug, Helen's mother let him go.

xxx

A long time ago – another lifetime ago – Helen and John had spent their honeymoon on Puerto Rico. John hired motorbikes and showed Helen how to drive one. She'd protested, shrieked at the noise, the power of the vehicle, then had tentatively tried one. After a couple of wobbly turns around an empty car park she'd declared, "I love it!" Her skin was brown in the sun, the tip of her nose sunburned and peeling.  
"Don't I need a licence or something?" she'd asked, suddenly worried.  
"Tch," John clicked his tongue dismissively. "Whatever."  
"I love it when you break the law, Mr Wick," she'd said seductively and leaned over to pinch his butt.  
"You're my partner in crime, Mrs Wick."  
"Always," she returned with a grin.

xxx

If Helen's parents' home held no ghosts, then Puerto Rico was littered with memories. 

The first few weeks he'd driven his hired bike along all of the routes they'd taken when they first explored the island. It became a kind of obsession, to re-trace all of the places they'd been. When that was done, he realised he wanted to do it again – then he became conscious of the fact that there was no reason why he shouldn't. So he found a place to stay, renting a small house in a little village off the tourist trail, and bought himself a motorcycle that he systematically took apart and put back together again. 

As he did so in the little yard in front of his rented house, people stopped to look at what he was doing and very soon he was being asked to look at other people's bikes and do small repairs. One day he sat on his heels in the sinking sunshine of a warm afternoon, bits of metal laid out on the ground around him, the smell of something spicy he'd been given bubbling on the little stove inside and he'd felt something strange. It was such a weird feeling that he'd put down the rag in his hand so he could steady himself as he stood up. What was it?

Oh, yes: he was content. This was what _content_ felt like: warm sun on the nape of your neck, a task to do, a hot meal and a warm bed. Sure, it wasn't _happy_ , but who knew if he'd ever experience happy again. But did it matter? He was content. That was enough.   
And he'd allowed himself to smile – not the polite upturn of his lips that he'd gotten used to producing, but a real smile. A smile of contentment.

The weeks became one month, then two.   
Then he'd started looking for a home and somehow, three months had passed. He liked to drive along the coast, visiting new villages, occasionally enquiring if some place was for sale. His landlady had started to hint that she might want to him to move out, she'd mentioned how much more money she'd be able to make on Airbnb during the tourist season. John had found a house he liked the look of within driving distance of San Juan and had started looking into buying some furniture and appliances. He'd settle down – for a while, at least.   
Experience had taught him that his past would inevitably find him, but he might have a few years of peace.

As it happened, it was much shorter than that.   
Much, much shorter.


	6. Chapter 6

At first he couldn't quite put his finger on it.   
He'd stayed away for a couple of nights and when he returned, he'd had the feeling that someone had been in his house. He lifted the board that formed the base of the heavy wooden closet in his room and checked that all of his things were there: the passports, the money, Helen's bracelet. Whoever had been in his room hadn't found it, but other things felt like they'd been moved.   
It felt like his things had been too carefully replaced.

"I'm paranoid," he thought, looking around.   
There was nothing out of place. The shoes he'd kicked off before he left still lay on the floor in a haphazard fashion, but yet it felt like someone had been snooping. He called Senora Alvarez and asked her if she'd been in the house.  
"Ai, no!" she cried, affronted. "Why would I be in your house?"  
He felt stupid; he couldn't explain why. Because it felt wrong? Ridiculous.  
"Maria Carmen," Senora Alvarez called. "Have you been in Mr Black's house?"  
The girl had popped her head around the door.   
"Why would I go into his house?" she asked, her plump face puzzled.  
"No matter," John murmured. "It's okay."

Paranoia.   
It was perfectly fine to be vigilant, his mentor had always said, until vigilance becomes paranoia. Is that what was happening?

He began to sleep fitfully, waking at every noise. At night, alone in the narrow bed of the spare room, he listened stiffly, pulling his arms close so he wouldn't bang against the wall. He should've been able to sleep in the large bed in the main bedroom, but it was an ornate piece with carvings of flowers and birds, an altar of fecundity.

" _La cama matrimonial,_ " Senora Alvarez had said, patting the cover with a wink. The matrimonial bed.   
John hadn't wanted a matrimonial bed, he'd wanted a monk's cell, so he moved into the small room with a narrow bed probably intended for a child or a skinny teenager. Now he lay there, his ears straining to hear any creak or squeak from inside or out, only allowing himself to sleep when he could assign every noise to its rightful source.

A week or two passed without further incident, without any further inkling that someone might have been in his home, when he was woken one night by the creak of the door. He sat bolt upright in bed, drawing a knife from under the thin mattress. He ran to the door, lightly padding across the tiles, pulling on a t-shirt as he went. While he paused at the door, poised on his toes, he quickly ran through all of the possibilities: plenty of people still looking for him. Few knew where he was. Who had what to gain by killing him?   
It made no sense, he'd dotted all i's, crossed all t's – who was in his living room and was that person alone?

He thought about getting his gun – any one of the guns stowed around the house – but the noise would wake the two Alvarez women next door, Maria Carmen's room overlooked his yard. He pressed a thumb against the blade of the knife; it was satisfyingly sharp. The person downstairs seemed to know where they were going, making their way to the kitchen without causing too much noise. 

Fleet of foot, he took the stairs two at a time and launched himself at the dark figure from behind, wrapping an arm around their neck and pressing the blade to the neck till he felt a trickle of blood on his fingers. Only then did he realise that the person in his arms was small. Aghast, he released her, banging the light switch with his fist. The room lit up and he saw Maria Carmen opposite him, her face horror-struck. He opened his mouth to say something but she touched her throat and, on seeing the flow of blood, leaned forward and vomited at his feet.  
"What are you doing here?" he cried, leaping away.  
She retched and sobbed. "It's your birthday, I wanted to give you something for your birthday. A surprise."

She indicated the table behind her, where she'd set a vase of flowers down and a single red candle in a glass candle holder.  
"It's not my – " John began and stopped.   
It probably was the date in his fake passport – he had so many, he couldn't remember any more.  
"Why are you in here?" he asked instead, throwing a towel on the floor.   
Maria Carmen, still crying, turned to the sink, pulling a bucket out from underneath it. Seeing how quickly and assuredly she found it, John realised something, "You've been in here while I've been away. Haven't you?"

She sniffed and nodded, turning her back on him.  
"Why?" he demanded.  
"Because I love you," she declared, turning to him. She grabbed a handful of kitchen paper and pressed it against the bleeding wound. "I love you, John, I love you."  
John was confounded.   
"You _love_ me?" he repeated. "You're half my age - I could be your father! Why on earth do you think you love me?"  
"I don't know why!" she cried in exasperation. Still pressing the paper to the wound, she stretched out a hand imploringly: "But age is just a number. If two people love each other, it does not matter. I love you and you can give me a chance – don't tell me you have never wanted to date a twenty-year-old?"  
"Yes, I have," he said patiently. "... when I was twenty. You're a nice girl, Maria Carmen, I really mean that – but you're... to me you're just a child."

Realisation dawned across her face.  
" _Muy bien,_ " she said coldly. "Fine."  
"I don't mean to be cruel – " he began.  
"Bien," she cut him off.  
"I'm sorry about the knife," he said. "But I thought – "  
"I suppose I am lucky you chose the knife," she said slyly. "And not one of your guns."  
She held his gaze for one heartbeat.   
Two.  
"Yes," he answered finally. "We are both very lucky."  
"I will clean this up," she said. "And I think we will not say anything to my mother."

John nodded.   
She nodded at his t-shirt, splattered with a few drops of her blood.  
"You can give me that, too," she said.   
He hesitated, then removed it and handed it over. She looked him up a down, as though she were examining fruit at the supermarket.  
"You have many, many scars," she observed. "Too many."  
He turned to leave, then realised he had shown her his tattoo. He retreated quickly.  
"Fortune favours the brave," she said and he glanced back at her, over his shoulder.  
"Not always," he said.

He waited, perched on the side of the bed, till he heard her leave.  
Then he went through the house and gathered his guns, packed his things. Heart thumping, he tried to figure out where to go next. Only when dawn arrived did he decide that his best bet would be to do nothing. If she had any sense, the girl would explain away the cut on her neck, but if he just disappeared immediately, she might be tempted to raise the alarm – the knifing, the guns, and God knows what else she'd found. If he just continued as normal for a few days, he'd have time to prepare his escape – slip away in the middle of the night or get a sudden phone call requiring his return to the continental United States.

Slowly he lay back on the bed and pulled the thin cotton cover over his legs and chest. His heart-rate had returned to normal. He stared at the ceiling and thought about who might have been trying to enter his home and only then would he allow himself to admit that a small part of him had hoped that it might have been Anna Quinn.


	7. Chapter 7

Finding Helen's parents was easy.   
Anna knew her surname and John had once let it slip that his wife's father had been a professor of something or other before he retired. After that, she only needed to spend a couple of hours on a computer in a grotty little internet cafe to find they were in Vermont. With a little digging, she discovered photos of Helen's mother on a site for a historical costume-making group: a photo of a beaming, dark-haired woman who looked like her daughter, bent over a dress she was sewing for some re-enactment or other. One quick phone call to the group's secretary got Helen's mother's address and her ex-directory phone number. Anna noted down the number, said her thanks and paid her bill at the cafe counter. Then she hit a few second-hand bookstores till she had enough books to fill a small cardboard box, upon which she scrawled _Helen_.

Getting information from Helen's parents was even easier – far too easy, in fact. She rang them, saying she had her number from John, and that she had some books that she'd borrowed from Helen, and would they like them back?   
Helen's mother had almost sobbed over the phone: of course they'd love to meet a friend of Helen's and they had so few of her things now that her house had burned down! How kind!   
So Anna'd turned up at the door, tried to explain that she was passing through and thought they'd like their daughter's books back – but she didn't get any further. Helen's mom ("Call me Catherine!") tried to hug her around, then over the box, till Helen's father took it off her and placed it on the bureau in their hallway.  
"Silvia Plath!" he exclaimed, removing a battered copy of The Bell Jar. "Oh, Helen!" he tsked, shaking his head.

They plied her with coffee, eager to hear about her friendship with Helen, wondering why they couldn't remember her name.   
The lies tripped off Anna's tongue – member of the museum society, worked with Helen on the committee, borrowed some of her books, Helen had such wonderful taste, all the classics – and if the story seemed porous, neither of the dead woman's parents was inclined to poke holes in it. They simply relished Anna's stories about Helen – stories that never happened. But Anna talked about dinner parties she and her partner Mark had attended at John and Helen's home. (Mark Pfeiffer? Where did that come from? Mark fucking Pfeiffer and Anna, John and Helen, at a jolly soirée, swigging glasses of Merlot? What the fuck?), shopping trips with Helen, coffee dates. And the older couple were entranced, open-mouthed, as though she were telling them a fairy story.   
Which, in a manner of speaking, she was.

"And have you heard from John?" she asked brightly.   
His photo was everywhere. The kind of cheesy posed photos that are supposed to look natural and arty, the ones you post on Instagram: hair tossed artfully, wide grins, mesmerised by each other's eyes, blithely ignoring the person with a camera.   
It made her sick.  
 _You're such a moron, John,_ she thought, annoyed.  
"He came to visit, didn't he, David?" Catherine asked. "But he left after a couple of days. I think he needed time to ... to mourn."  
She said the words, wringing her hands.

Anna shook her head sadly.   
"Poor thing," she said. "And where did he go? Has he returned to New York? Mark said he'd been trying to contact him but didn't want to, you know, put him under pressure or anything at this difficult time..."  
"He said he was going back to Puerto Rico," David said and, seeing her blank face, added, "Where they went on their honeymoon."  
"Oh, of course, yes, I remember Helen showing me the photos..." she said quickly. "I've heard it's amazing. Have you been?"  
"We were the ones who recommended it!" Catherine said eagerly. "There was some issue with John's passport – "  
( _Like, he couldn't choose which of his fakes to use,_ Anna thought)  
" – so we told them to go to Puerto Rico. We'd been there the year before to – "  
" – Ponce," finished Helen's father. "The 'pearl of the south', they call it. Beautiful place."  
They did that a lot, cutting into each other's sentences, sometimes finishing them, sometimes just talking over one another. It made for a very demanding conversation.  
"I think that's probably where he's gone. That's where they went on their honeymoon – "  
"Well, in and around Ponce," Helen's father corrected.  
"Mostly Ponce," Catherine said firmly but Anna cut in before they got distracted by their argument.  
"Pearl of the south?" Anna said. "Sounds beautiful. I must add that to my list of places to see."

She smiled and sipped her coffee, and moved the conversation on to the subject of one of their many paintings. Tripping over each other's words, eager to tell her who'd painted it and where they got it, Helen's parents gave her with more coffee and cake, disappointed when, half an hour later, she said she had to leave.

x x x 

In all her years working professionally, Anna Quinn had learned that sometimes it was easier to hide in plain sight. She flew to Puerto Rico from Florida and while at the airport attached herself to a group of women who were taking a trip to Puerto Rico for the beaches. And the booze. And the men.  
"Kayla is getting married next year," one of the women said.  
Kayla, clearly the alpha-female, the ringleader, leaned over and flapped a manicured hand in Anna's face.  
"This is so not a bachelorette thing," she said. "We used to take holidays together, like, all the time, so this is our last chance to get an all-girls' break in before I get married."  
 _Because,_ Anna thought, _once Kayla gets married none of these women will be allowed to get together unless it's at her convenience._

Typical spoiled princess, she fumed. Girls like Kayla had tortured her through middle school pointing at her weird clothes, threadbare shoes and sullen face. By the time they moved to high school, they flew in their own orbit, dating good looking senior boys and treating anyone outside their circle with disdainful disinterest. Back in high school when she was just scruffy Ann Finnerty, Anna had spent a long time observing them from underneath the long fringe of her dyed black hair, watching how they spoke and moved. So ingratiating herself with Kayla's group was a piece of cake.

Echoing their sing-song voices, their flapping hands and their pursed lips, she flattered and giggled and made herself so amiable that she was invited to join them before they were even called to board.   
She was alone, right?   
Like, yeah, she'd caught her stupid boyfriend cheating the week before - awww! sympathetic hand waving and tossing of hair – well, she was going enjoy the holiday anyway, even if Mr Shithead wasn't going with her! Uh-huh!  
"Join us," one of the girls, Ashley, said. She had the same straightened hair, the same suspiciously even tan as Kayla. "The more, the merrier, Anna!"  
Feigning shyness, Anna acquiesced, and changed her seat so she sit beside Ashley to learn more about the ins and outs of friendship in Kayla's pack.

x x x

The women could not hold their liquor.   
The first night there, Anna watched in horror as they downed cocktails with abandon, growing more and more drunk, before toddling off towards the beach, discarding shoes and bags on the way. She scuttled behind them, gathering up scattered belongings and steered two of the women back to the hotel. She put them in the recovery position on their beds, then had a snoop around their things before she made her way to bed. The next morning, she was alone for breakfast and it was fast obvious that the other six women had no intention of getting up before midday. Seizing the opportunity, she made her way through the old town of Ponce, looking for places that looked like they might have attracted John Wick's attention. She showed photos to shop and bar owners and although her Spanish was rusty, it was adequate enough to know he hadn't been there. By the time she got back to the hotel after lunch, the other women had descended and were groaning off their hangovers beside the pool. Anna lay beside them, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses as she moaned and complained and swore she was never going to touch alcohol again. Till that evening, of course.

The second evening she faked a headache to avoid going to a nightclub – no point in even asking there, she couldn't imagine John Wick at a nightclub. She spent the evening slipping from one bar to another, shaking off chat-ups and offers of free drinks. The next day, she trailed behind Brittany, Ashley and Kayla as they went from shop to shop, looking at clothes. She _ooh_ ed and _aah_ ed and allowed herself be persuaded to buy a tight little black Lycra dress that was splashed with red flowers, like splatters of blood.  
"You so have the figure for that," Ashley said enviously and thrust a pair of high heels at her.   
Anna slipped them on and looked at herself in the mirror. The last time she'd worn something like that was when she and John were working, many moons ago. And the shoes – always the first casualty of one of their professional outings - usually got abandoned along the way.  
"Buy! Buy! Buy!" the others chanted and, laughing, she pulled out her credit card and had the shop girl ring them up.

That evening, dressed in her new dress, unsteady in her high heels, Anna went with the group to one of the bars she'd been to the previous night. She'd wanted to slip away again and visit a couple of hotels that she'd marked in her guidebook, but she'd allowed herself to be persuaded to put on her new dress and shoes and go with the other women.  
 _It's just a night off_ , she thought.   
The chances that John was still in Ponce were very slim. Knowing him, he was probably somewhere as far from people as he could manage, somewhere where he could drive his car or bike. By a beach, probably.  
So she laughed and agreed and let Ashley style her hair. It had grown to her shoulders; she was trying to grow out her blond highlights, something Ashley did not approve of. She also got a telling off for not getting a tan, but Anna couldn't persuade the other woman that that had more to do with genetics than a lack of willingness.  
"I'm Irish," she said. "We just freckle. If you're lucky, the freckles join up and you look a bit darker."  
"Tanning booth," Ashley said, shocked. "Spray-on tan, babe. We don't live like savages."  
She took a swig from her can of rum and coke and handed it to Anna, who pretended to drink before placing the can discreetly on the floor.

They got out of their taxis in the old part of town.  
"This one!" Rochelle announce, pointing across the road.   
Anna stiffened when she saw the bar it was a typical tourist trap, with a large, long bar in a cavernous cellar, and one she had already visited pro forma – she couldn't imagine John going there voluntarily but it was the most popular bar in the quarter so she wanted to tick it off her mental list. The bar itself was downstairs, the ground floor consisted of a large room where salsa music played without a pause and couples danced languorously, oblivious to the people gathered around, drinking their cocktails and chatting. The group of women went down the stone stairs, bending their heads under the low, arched cellar ceiling.  
"This is so pretty," Ashley said. "So exotic."  
"All original," Rochelle said. "I read about it in my guidebook."  
"I'm just going to hit the ladies'," Anna said and picked up her clutch. 

She wove her way through the crowd, smacking off a hand that rested on her butt for a second, and was just about to push the door that led to the toilets when she saw a pair of legs that she recognised coming down the stone stairs.   
_How can you recognise someone by their legs?_ she wondered as she slipped into the corridor that led to the restrooms, then pushed open the door a tiny crack, enough to put her eye up against it.  
It wasn't the legs, it was the gait, the long tread, the cautious steps.   
It was John.

"Of all the bars, et cetera," she muttered. "I didn't even have to fucking look for him."  
She watched him duck his head under the arched ceiling of the cellar bar, his eyes scanning the place, searching for exits, toilets, door behind the bar.   
Why on earth had he come here? The place was a rat-trap, one way in and probably only one way out.   
Then a girl popped out from behind him, grabbed his hand and pulled him gently behind her in the direction of an empty space at the long bar. She was dark-haired, dark-eyed, small and curvy, with a wide, smiley face. And she was about half his age.

"Ugh, John," she said out loud and she watched him walk behind her, bowing his head when the ceiling was too low.   
He was wearing dark jeans and a black t-shirt, his hair was a little longer, his beard a little scruffier, his skin a little more tan. And when he raised a hand to catch the barman's attention, she saw he wasn't wearing his wedding ring any more.  
"Scumbag," Anna said and jumped back when the door was shoved into her face by someone trying to get by.  
" _Perdón,_ " a young man said, pushing past her, his face curious.  
She smiled at him and went down to ladies' restroom. She knew it would only be a matter of minutes before John came down the corridor to scope the place and, sure enough, when the door of the ladies' restroom was pushed open by another woman, she saw the back of his head as he entered into the men's toilet opposite.

By the time she returned to the table, the other women were on their second drink and starting to get raucous.  
"I say we all have a round of shots," Kayla announced imperiously and clicked her fingers. "Anna, your turn!"  
Anna felt her hackles rise. John turning up at the bar was the last thing she'd expected or wanted, she'd wanted to find him on her own terms but instead he'd walked in on her night off with some ... some child in tow. Now she was being ordered around by Kayla, who had been tipsy before they'd even entered the bar and now had enough alcohol in her to consider herself the queen of Puerto Rico.  
"Vodka?" Anna asked into the round and those not busy flirting with the men at adjacent tables nodded in agreement.

She slid through the crowd, wriggling past the couples who were flirting and drinking.  
John, on the far side of the bar, seemed to be having problems concentrating on his date. He kept glancing around anxiously, as though he sensed she was around.   
_He'd always had good instincts, John._  
Anna watched him behind one of the stone columns dotted around the bar and remembered what she'd learned in training: the subconscious mind notes things far more quickly that the conscious mind. Chances were, he'd caught a glimpse of her while scanning the bar but while his brain was trying to process what he'd seen, his instincts were hitting the alarm button. He knew something was wrong, he just didn't know what.  
"Senora?" the barkeeper asked.  
"Seven vodkas," she said distractedly. Her own brain clicked. "No, six," she corrected, and continued to watch John.   
He was making an effort to concentrate on his date, smiling stiffly as she chattered away animatedly.   
Anna's lips twisted into a smile. She couldn't do anything she would've liked to: she couldn't confront him. She couldn't talk to him. She couldn't beat the shit out of him. But she could do something she was good at: torture him. She shoved money at the barkeeper and told him to keep the change, then made her way back to the table, where she deposited the glasses.

"I have to go to the restroom," she announced to no one in particular, then grabbed her clutch and slipped away.   
Careful to keep her back turned to him, she swaggered in her heels to change her gait, moving in a wide circle till she was close to John's table, his back to her. John had chosen a table close to a door marked 'Staff Only' in English and Spanish; she guessed it led to the kitchens, possibly to a back exit. The bar was full, she was gently swaying with the people pushing past. She checked the tables and chairs around, then moved closer, staring at the back of his head.  
"John," she said. "John. John. John."

The din in the bar was loud, a constant ebb and flow of conversation. But she knew that he would hear her; or think he heard her.   
She grinned and said again, "John."  
It only took seconds. Anna could almost see the hair rise on the back of his neck, he shifted in his seat.   
She waited till he began to turn, just enough to see her out of the corner of his eye, then she turned away, walked a few steps and crouched a little, pretending to look for something on the floor. 

Slipping past a knot of noisy patrons standing around a tall table, she dropped to her knees and crawled in under a bench by the wall, holding her breath, expecting some enquiring face to peer under the bench to see what she was doing. None came. She scrambled along the floor under the long seat, avoiding people's feet and gently pushing handbags out of the way, till she came to the other end, close to the staff exit. She peered out past someone's purse and saw John in the middle of the bar, looking around frantically. He had no weapon; his hands clenched and unclenched as they did when he was nervous. The woman he'd come with was still at their table, looking confused. Anna watched as he moved swiftly past her and through the staff door, then scrambled out as fast as she could, to the surprise of the people at her table.

"Dropped my keys," she said in explanation to their startled faces.   
Then she took off through the bar as quickly as she could without running. She got to the stairs and, glancing back, saw the staff door start to open. Controlling herself, she walked up the steps coolly, knowing she was out of view, and then walked casually out the door and flagged down one of the waiting taxis.

As it drove off she craned her head around, just in time to see John appear the doorway of the bar. He looked around, his hand pushing his hair back off his face.   
She couldn't see his facial expression but she would've paid good money to do so.  
"Bastard," she thought with a smirk. "I hope that spooked you, John Wick."


	8. Chapter 8

If John was rattled, it was nothing in comparison to Maria Carmen, who was freaked out.

"Where did you go?" she kept insisting. "Why did you leave?"  
Her cheeks had two bright pink spots of colour, her Spanish accent was stronger than it usually was as she struggled to find the right English words.  
"I was just here, I turn around to look and you are run away!" she cried accusingly.  
"I thought I saw someone," he said weakly.   
He pulled over his drink, sipped it and then pushed it away. He'd ordered a Cuba Libre but was now wishing he had just stuck to Coke.  
"Your ex-girlfrien'?" she asked with the same sly tone look she'd had when she'd mentioned his guns.

John suddenly felt tired. He didn't quite know what she was talking about, though her knowing tone of voice implied she had information on him that she wasn't supposed to know. It was probably something he'd told her mother to keep her quiet, some sob-story he'd concocted to get the old woman to leave him alone and stop interrogating about his sex life – or lack thereof. He wasn't good at lying, he was even worse at keeping his lies straight. Anna was always the one who'd looked after that kind of thing; she wove a web of banal but fictitious details and always managed to remember whom she'd told what to. John had only ever had to nod along.   
Keeping up with whatever he'd told Maria Carmen and Maria Carmen's mother was exhausting.

"No," he said shortly and saw the girl's chin jut into a pout.   
He softened his voice.  
"Actually, I thought it was someone I used to know from college."  
"Which college?" she asked eagerly, happy to show interest.  
John racked his brains.   
Had he mentioned a college already? God, he was sick of this charade.  
"Back home," he answered and before she could take umbrage at another taut answer, he gave her a smile, full wattage, and she smiled back at him, her rosy lips stretched almost from ear to ear in a happy smile.  
"I'm so glad we're doing this," she said.  
"Me, too," he mumbled.

Nothing could've been further from the truth.   
After he'd caught her in his house, she'd avoided him for a few days, not meeting his eyes when she left the house to go to her classes in the morning, skulking past his yard in the evening. His first impulse had been to throw everything he had into his bag and leave in the middle of the night – abandon his bike, sneak out to the second-hand car he'd bought when he first arrived, drive to San Juan and get the first flight back to the continental US. 

But years of training, of discipline kicked in: John did not trust impulsive behaviour. Way back when he'd been a teen, dragged from one temporary home to another, following a mother who believed that the next man would be her One True Love, his north star had been impulse: he had done what he'd felt compelled to do, without consideration for the consequences, because ... well, just because. He'd gone from fighting in the school yard to dabbling in dope, then ecstasy. He'd dropped out of school, hung out a friend's house whose parents were away all day at work. They'd drunk the contents of the parents' drinks cabinet and John had pilfered some of their money and a couple of the mother's smaller pieces of jewellery to buy some weed. The loss had been noted and the parents threatened to call the police; John's mother, sick of having to discipline the lanky, sullen teenager who was bigger than herself, let her latest husband had a go at it. He'd taken a hardcover book off the shelf and smacked the boy around the head a few times before John pushed back and knocked him over. Wailing, his mother propelled him out the door with all of her might, locking it firmly behind him. 

And thus he found himself on the streets of Queens late one night, with no jacket, no money and no clue what to do.

He spent a couple of weeks drifting around the city; at first he'd tried to find a bed at a homeless shelter but after a couple of nights there, an older man with the yellowish eyes of a cat pulled him down on the bunk beside him and began to stroke his thigh while the other men in the room studiously looked away.   
Such a pretty boy he was, such lovely bone structure, such soft lips. Pretty, pretty boy. He'd never need worry about having no money, with all the talent he so clearly had to offer.   
John had gulped, swallowed, and he watched the yellow eyes follow the bob of his Adam's apple before he pulled away and shoved the older man hard. He grabbed his shoes from beside his bed and went out into the cold, pulling the jacket around him that he'd gotten from the Salvation Army.

Kay Chen had found him – caught him – a couple of nights later.   
He'd been in Times Square, trying to pluck up the courage to rob a purse or bag from some unsuspecting tourist. He'd noticed her red handbag, the tip of her wallet sticking out, her head turned from him as she studied some guidebook. He'd moved closer, as stealthily, nonchalantly, as he could manage, then slipped his fingers into her bag. She grabbed his wrist, digging her long nails in, and spun around to face him.  
"Calm," she'd said in her cool voice. "Be calm. Everything will be fine."  
He'd felt almost mesmerised. Her face projected the calm she wanted him to show and her voice was low and even.  
"Are you a lost boy?" she'd asked in that same low tone and he was startled by the question.  
"Am I lost?" he repeated.  
"Are you a lost boy?" she'd said again, her voice even, without inflexion.   
She stared at him, her eyes as dark as his, almost hidden by the bangs that hung below her eyebrows, almost touching her dark lashes.  
"Yes," he'd answered, suddenly aware that he was, in fact, lost; that he'd always been lost.  
"Well, I have found you," she said and with a smile, released his wrist, leaving behind four red crescents of blood on his pale skin, the same colour of her nails. 

She'd taken him back to Michael Black, who'd greeted him like a prodigal son, and John had learned that they would train him. Make a man of him. A better man. The best man he could be.  
"What would be your weak spot?" Black had asked. "What do we need to work on?"  
John had swallowed. "I don't think," he said. "I guess I don't think stuff through."  
Chen and Black had nodded.   
"We can fix that, my boy," said Mr Black. "When you are finished your training with us, you will think everything through."  
x xx 

And so he had steeled himself to stay put; or at least stay put long enough to not arouse suspicion. He knew that leaving San Luis would cause tongues to wag and Maria Carmen would no doubt be quick to tell anyone who wanted to know about his guns. The money. The passports. Whatever else she'd found. So he thought the matter through and came to the conclusion that for the time being, he had to keep his friends close but his enemies closer. He continued as though nothing had happened, as though he had nothing to hide. He repaired a moped for Fr. Antonio, he fixed a blocked drain for Maria Carmen's mother and accepted no payment for his service. And then he casually asked Maria Carmen if he could buy her dinner to make up for giving her such a fright.

Emotions flickered across her face like a film reel, before she finally gave in and said yes.  
"It's not a date," he'd said light-heartedly, "just an apology."  
"A date," she'd said scornfully, her eyes dancing. "Of course it's not a date!"  
They agreed not to tell her mother – so much easier if she didn't know – and John'd met her at a restaurant in Ponce's old town, hoping to impress her into silence by taking her somewhere so expensive and fancy that she'd forgive him any irregularities she might've noticed while rifling through his things.

After the meal – a nice meal: she was a pleasant young woman, easy company, even if her conversation steered on to topics he knew little about or had little interest in - she'd insisted they go to a bar, the coolest bar, the bar everyone went to, and against his better judgement he'd allowed her drag him into another tourist trap, the kind of place that set every alarm bell ringing. It was underground for a start, a place that was not good to get out of in a hurry. And it was full of American tourists and wealthier locals, mostly younger than him. He felt out of place in a bar full of people looking to get drunk and get laid, in that order. If Maria Carmen noticed his discomfort, she hadn't given any indication; she took his hand and tugged him through the crowd, gently elbowing people out of their way till she snagged them a table in the corner. Before he'd even sat down, his sixth sense began to tingle and he could barely focus on what Maria Carmen was saying. It was loud, it was full, and he glanced anxiously around, trying to figure out what was making him feel so uneasy. She kept grabbing his hand and, at one point, his chin to steer his face to hers so he would focus on his date and not look around. Aware that he was upsetting her, he put on an expression that he hoped was approximated pleasantly interested and smiled at her.

Then he heard his name.   
Or did he?   
His smile froze, he strained his ears.   
There it was again – or was it? 

He grabbed his hand away and turned his head. His stomach lurched: he thought he saw Anna Quinn but even as he blinked, she was gone.  
"Fuck!" he swore and turned in his seat.  
"John?" Maria Carmen said.  
He left the table, pushing through the crowd. She was gone.   
He shoved past a group of Americans and crashed into the kitchen, startling a waiter, the kitchen help.  
"Where's the exit? The exit?" he shouted in English. "The way out?"

Most of them shrugged, not knowing what he was saying, but one of them pointed back the way he came.  
John cursed. The bar was a fucking death trap, only one way out.   
He dashed back the way he came, pushed through the crowds and up the stairs, on to the street. People smoking outside looked at him curiously.  
"Did a woman come this way?" he demanded. "A blond woman? Blond? Small?"  
"Rubia? Sí," a man said, crushing a cigarette butt underfoot. "Taxi."  
And he pointed at a car driving down the street. John squinted but he could see nothing that would distinguish who was in the cab.  
"Gracias," he'd said wearily and returned to Maria Carmen. 

When he finally managed to calm her, he bought her another drink, allowed her to hang her arms around his neck while they swayed in time to some sad Latin song, before taking her home and depositing her at the door with a kiss on her forehead. She was drunk enough not to care about the fatherly gesture, she ran a finger up and down his chest and suggested she go back to his place for another drink.  
"Next time," he promised and held the door open for her.  
"Next time," she agreed and blew him a kiss.

He let himself in, turned on no lights but sneaked through the house barefoot, a gun in his hand. It was empty, no one had been there, the little traps he'd set to detect if anyone had crossed the threshold were still intact. He sat on a chair in the dark kitchen and ran a hand through his hair, pulled at his beard.  
Had he really seen Anna Quinn? How could he be sure?   
He hesitated a moment, then pulled his phone out of his pocket and scrolled through the numbers. He chose one and hit the 'dial' button, listening to the beeps as it connected.   
The voice that answered was female and the accent was unmistakably New York.

"I know who this is," the voice said sharply. "And I'm gonna tell you who this is: this is Aurelio's fiancée and as of next month, his wife. So I'm telling you now: you do not want to be calling him, you get me? You do not want to be calling him unless you want him to fix a fender or spray some bodywork, you hear? And you most certainly do not want to be calling him in the middle of the night. So whatever this call is about, the answer is no thank you, fuck you very much."

And she hung up.   
John stared at the screen of the phone, astonished. He scrolled again till he found the number for The Continental, then hesitated. He scrolled again till he found Winston's mobile number – and hesitated again. Finally he put the phone down and checked that all the door and windows were bolted. He gathered a blanket off his bed and lay down on the narrow, horsehair-stuffed couch and spent a restless night weighing up his options and thinking them through, all the while suppressing the urge to pick up his gun, walk out of that house and disappear.


	9. Chapter 9

In the back of the taxi, Anna laughed silently to herself, all the way back to the hotel.  
Her good humour followed her all the way up to the fourth floor; she found herself smirking at her reflection in the elevator mirror. It was only upon unlocking the hotel room door, that she suddenly fully realised what she'd done. The realisation that she had forfeited any advantage over Wick in order to fuck up his head slammed her from behind and she sank down on to the bed, kicking off her new shoes as she did so.

God, she was so stupid. So, so stupid.  
It had always been that way – even when they were training, Michael Black used to take her aside to tell her off for teasing John.  
"It'll get you into trouble one of these days," he warned.  
But Anna had disagreed. It was all fine and well as long as she was the one to tease him. As soon as she had ever suspected someone else was mocking her partner, her feathers were immediately ruffled and she began to prowl, looking for ways to defend his honour – whether he wanted her to or not. Because he was _her_ John, hers to poke fun at, to good-naturedly tease and taunt – except now her desire to have a little fun at his expense meant that he knew she was here and he knew she was looking for him.

She chewed her knuckles, as she always did when she was thinking. She had to think like Wick; what would he do now? Assuming he had reason to flee, he might make a run for it – he might be heading for the nearest airport right now, in which case he could end up anywhere. Literally anywhere. He had the money, he had the passport – or passports, as the case may be. 

Or he might wait till she turned up looking for him. If he had nothing to hide, no reason to want to avoid her, he'd stay put until she found him, because they both knew she would find him eventually. Or maybe he'd just wait till she turned up and kill her. Finish the job himself.

 _Stupid Anna_ , she thought again.  
It would've been so much easier to track him down and wake him for a parlay with the barrel of a handgun jammed between his teeth. Find out whether he'd really hired that bumbling professional to take her out. Maybe it was all a huge mistake? After all, he had no reason to want to see her dead. Unless that little Latina was a reason – maybe that's why he never came back for her. He'd moved on. He was retiring again and tidying up the loose ends left behind in the previous chapter of his life.

Her head hurt.  
This kind of thing – the analysis, the thinking, the overthinking - was John's forte. When they worked together, they would do their research and reconnaissance and thrash out the details of the job. At least, Anna would thrash them out, throwing out suggestions, coming up with ideas, one wilder than the last. If it was up to her, she would approach the job like a cat, moving from point to point, watching and waiting and deciding on the spot how to proceed.  
John, on the other hand, liked to think things through.  
It was typical of his training, he'd become a tactical expert, always expecting the unexpected and planning for it. He was a master of Plan Bs. Plan Cs. And the occasional Plan D.  
He used to listen to Anna's ideas then raise a hand to stop her mid-flow. She'd roll her eyes and John would look down at her, face serious.  
"Let me think it through," he'd say.

It always frustrated her; he'd go off for a walk or lock himself in the bathroom, anywhere where she was not. He was the senior partner of the two, so he had the last say in their plans and she had to go along with what he suggested. It really riled her to acquiesce; she argued with him on every point, sometimes long after she'd seen the sense of his argument herself. Finally, irked, she'd deliberately ignored his instructions and had almost ended up killed on one occasion, and she'd had a bullet skim her shoulder on another. The third time she had done what liked, rather than follow John's pedantic plan, she'd received a beating from a Russian druglord's bodyguard before John managed to step in and pull him off. He'd disposed of the larger man with a couple of bullets and put her over his shoulder, struggling under her weight to aim his gun accurately at a second man who burst through the door, gun cocked and loaded. John ignored her gasps of pain from the broken ribs sustained at the steel toecaps of her opponent's boots and had dumped her in the back of the car, telling her to shut up, just shut up, when she tried to explain what had happened. He took off, tires squealing, and she was thrown up against the window. She moaned and he glanced over at her. He opened his mouth as though to say something then shut it again, pressed his lips together and overtook a taxi, speeding between it and an oncoming car without so much as flinching.

John helped her into The Continental, a long coat slung over her shoulders to hide the blood. Not that anyone in the lobby would be paid them much heed, but Winston was a stickler for protocol and Anna Quinn hobbling across his Persian rugs, bruised and battered, was not in keeping with the _ambiente_.  
Charon took one look at her and pursed his lips.  
"Again?" he asked wearily. "It is becoming quite the habit, Miss Quinn."  
"Fuck off."  
Her mouth hurt too much to say more. One of her teeth felt a little loose.  
"The doctor is rather busy tonight but I will send him up presently," Charon said. "Now please move along before you ... drip."

He proffered their room key disdainfully. Charon always found the new agents very tiresome. They lacked that certain polish they liked to see in their clientele; luckily many of them didn't last their first year, so the issue was one that tended to resolve itself. And while young Mr Wick would, in time, acquire that world-weary poise so many of their guests affected, the girl – and she was barely more than a girl, only 21 or 22, - had the restlessness of a wound spring and the foul mouth of a guttersnipe. He repressed a shudder and found her angry blue eyes focussed on him. He gave her a tight-lipped smile which she did not return.

John nodded at him at took the key and led her to the elevator.  
She leaned on him in the elevator but he was immobile, his head turned away. It was rare that he was angry with her but when he was, he couldn't bear to look at her. Anna let him open the hotel room door and steer her on to the bed.  
Wordlessly he splashed some bourbon into a glass and held it out.  
"Drink," he said and he went into the bathroom to take a shower.  
Anna sipped carefully from the glass, the cut on her lip stinging when the alcohol hit it.

When John came out, a towel wrapped around his waist, there was a rap on the door and the doctor entered, throwing his bag onto the bed.  
He sighed when he saw her.  
"I think you should consider another profession," he said. "This is the third time this month. You runts only earn peanuts anyway and most of it is being spent on my services. Why don't you cut your losses and bow out – become a manicurist or a florist or something that doesn't involve getting beaten up?"  
All the while he was turning her head this way and that, daubing her mouth with a cloth to see whether her split lip needed stitches.  
"Either you're extraordinarily bad at this or extraordinarily unlucky," the doctor said, threading his needle.  
"Or extraordinarily stupid," John muttered, rubbing his hair with a towel.  
She couldn't reply; the doctor was holding her chin in a vise grip as he quickly sewed the wound, one, two stitches. Pride wouldn't let her cry out but her ears filled with tears of pain when she winced, the throbbing from her ribs shooting up into her skull.

The doctor checked his watch impatiently and ordered her to lift her shirt, prodding her ribcage to make her yelp.  
"Probably cracked," he proclaimed. "Not much I can do now, you can get an x-ray tomorrow at my practice downtown to make sure. Which will wipe out any profit you might have made tonight, mind you."  
John heaved a sigh.  
"It's okay," Anna said quickly. "Probably just bruised."  
The doctor fished around in his bag and removed a roll of bandage.  
"Mr Wick," he said and flung it at him. "Tape her up good and tight. Here are a few Advil – take 'em and slow down on the whiskey. I've got to go – other people need me more tonight."  
He tipped an imaginary cap at them and was gone.

"You will probably have to remove your brassiere," John said in his formal way, his eyes shifting away in embarrassment.  
He'd gotten dressed for the night, a pair of cotton pants and a black t-shirt, barefoot on the hotel rug. Standing before him, she pulled off her bra and pressed an arm across her breasts. He'd seen her naked often enough but that was usually at her instigation; he'd never come within arm's reach of her, though. Now he was gently, gingerly, wrapping the wide bandage around her ribcage, trying to avoid his fingertips brushing her skin. Anna looked down at his bent head: he'd had his hair cut short, but now it was starting to grow out and was at an annoying stage where tufts stood up at all angles, resistant to any kind of gel. It made her smile when she saw him in the morning, rubbing sleep out of his eyes with a halo of dark spikes around his head like a crown of thorns.

John tugged the bandage and she cringed under his touch.  
"Hurt?" he said shortly.  
"Yes," she said. "No. A bit, I guess."  
He tied it swiftly and sat back.  
"Why don't you follow the plan?"  
"Follow _your_ plan," she corrected.  
"Follow _our_ plan," he said. " _The_ plan. Why don't you do it? You keep doing your own thing and you keep getting your ass kicked. We're losing money, Quinn, and it's only a matter of time before you get yourself killed."  
She was silent.  
"Why, Quinn?" he insisted.  
"Have you ever considered the idea that I might not want to follow your plan?" she said and even as the words came out of her mouth, she realised how petulant she sounded.

He stared at her and she stared back.  
It had taken her a while to learn to stare him down – at first she'd been quick to wither under his gaze. He could stare at her, head cocked slightly, as though she was some kind of strange specimen that he was about to dissect. Ordinarily guarded and reserved, he stared at her with a kind of frankness that made her squirm and she had to steel herself not to look away.  
"Why do you not want to do what I suggest?" he said finally, choosing his words carefully.  
She shook her head. She knew how it would sound if she told him. She knew how childish she was being but as long as she didn't say it, it wasn't a fact. If she said it -

"I'm just sick of everyone telling me to do what you say. Like, you're Mr Perfect. As though you know everything," she blurted out.  
_For fuck's sake, Anna,_ she chided herself. _Zip it, bitch!_  
But she couldn't.  
"You're the golden boy and I'm your sidekick. The idiot child with a target on her back. Do you know how many fucking people have told me or hinted to me that it's just a matter of time before I take a bullet? Before I even signed my contract, fucking Winston said, 'Stick with Jonathan and he'll keep you alive'."  
"So … you're jealous?" John asked, confused. "You're jealous because everyone thinks I'm better at this than you?"  
"No!" she cried. "I mean, yes. It pisses me off that they all think that you're better at this than me. Of course it does. But I hate the fact that me staying alive depends on you. I don't want to depend on you to keep me alive, Johnny. I don't want to depend on anybody, except myself. I want to be able to defend myself without your help because what's gonna happen when you're not there any more?"

John's head sank. He looked at the carpet for a couple of minutes then met her eyes again.  
"We're a team, Annie," he said. "We can learn from each other, we can teach each other to be better at what we do. I know I drive you crazy – all the plans, all the contingencies. But it's my duty to keep you alive and this is the only way I know how to do it."  
"But it shouldn't be your responsibility," she argued. "I'm responsible for myself."

He laid a hand on her arm and she started under his warm skin. It was the first time he'd ever touched her voluntarily, apart from trying to pin her down in a judo hold or jab her in jujitsu.  
"I can be responsible for you if I know you've got my back," he said quietly. "And as long as you're off doing your shit, you haven't got my back. Do you understand?"  
Suddenly, Anna did.  
"We're in this together," he said. "Mutually assured destruction or mutually assured protection, I don't know which. But in any case, we've got to look out for each other. Get it?"  
She nodded.  
He removed his hand, putting it behind his back as though he didn't trust himself not to touch her again.  
He took a step backwards and continued formally, "And if this happens again, Quinn, I'm afraid I will be forced to ask Michael Black to terminate our contract on the basis of professional incompatibility. Can we agree on this?"  
"It won't happen again," she said. "I'll cover you, Wick. I promise."  
"And I promise I will always cover you," he said.

They stared at each other.  
It felt like something they should shake on, but Anna thought that they'd touched each other once too often that night. John nodded slowly and turned away, pulling back the blanket on the bed.  
"Good night," he said, getting in.  
He rolled on to his side, face hidden from her.  
"Good night," she answered and gathered up her night clothes.  
She didn't know how she'd manage to get on the t-shirt she slept in but she could tell from John's pretence at sleeping that his responsibility for her well-being was not going to cover dressing her as well.


	10. Chapter 10

"Hey," said the blond man sliding into the seat opposite her.

Startled, Anna looked up.  
He removed his sunglasses and grinned at her. He looked like an ageing surfer: his hair was shoulder length and those streaks once bleached by sun were now a silvery grey. His skin was tanned and lined, his eyes curiously dark against his blond hair. Anna knew instantly she'd seen him before but couldn't remember; she knew, though, that he was from the Agency. And here he was, sitting opposite her at her breakfast table, in plain sight.

"Where are your girlfriends, babe?" he asked. "Still asleep? Sleeping off their hangovers?"  
"Who are you?" she muttered. "What do you want?"  
She stirred her muesli with a spoon, trying to act as normal as she could.  
"Mea culpa, mea culpa, sweets," he said. He even sounded like a surfer, his voice low and melodious. "We haven't been formally introduced." He tapped his chest. "I'm Evan Farley. Friend of Markus? Met at The Continental, like, about 15 years ago?"

It rang a vague bell.  
"I was out of the business for a while," he said apologetically, as though he felt bad that she did not know him. "Only recently got back into it. And this is where my first assignment takes me – peachy, eh?"

He looked around the terrace of the restaurant hotel, overlooking the turquoise pool. Breakfast was served from 6 am onwards and she'd been outside the door at 6.05. Until his arrival, Anna had been the only guest and the place was still empty, save for the bored wait staff and a gardener, who was desultorily sweeping up some leaves. Anna stared at him, spooning honey into her bowl.

"Seriously, dude," she said, "you're going have to tell me what the fuck you want."  
"To kill you? The contract?" he said.   
He spoke like a teen, his voice rising to make questions where no questions were asked.   
"You know there's a contract on your head, right?"  
"Really?" she lied, feigning ignorance.  
"Yeah, just went open. It's causing quite the bit of interest because apparently you were supposed to be dead or something, am I right? Coupla people wanna shoot you just for that, you know. Who does that? People were sad you passed, sweetheart."  
"Show me the contract," she demanded. 

He grinned at her and pulled the phone out of the pocket of his bermuda shorts.He pressed a few buttons on his phone and slid it over. As Anna reached to pick it up, she felt the barrel of a gun press against her bare knee. He was still smiling at her lazily, leaning a little to his right so he could put his gun against her leg under the table.

She tried not to gulp aloud and took the phone. It was the same contract the Washington girl had shown her, except now the status was amended to 'open'. She scrolled down. That signature: John Wick. 

A wave of anger rose inside her and made her want to smash the phone. Instead, she pushed it back.  
He saw her face.   
"John Wick, yeah. Stone cold, that dude. Stone cold, babe. You deserved so much better."

"How did you know I was here?" she said, ignoring his dig and his use of the past tense.  
"A little bird tipped me off that you were in Puerto," he said. "And I don't know much about how you work but I remember someone telling me that you start your business, like, way early. So I thought it would be worth my while to get up at the crack o' dawn and check out a few hotel restaurants. This is my third hotel, third time lucky."

Farley pushed the gun against her knee, as if to underline the punchline.   
Anna tipped another spoon of honey on her muesli and regarded him warily. Despite his beach boy (beach bum?) looks, he was smart. He'd probably learned to play on his surfer dude appearance and palaver to belie the fact that he was actually quite sharp. Watching her, he saw the realisation cross her mind and he grinned.  
"Yeah," he said, nodding. "I'm no dumb chuck, babe."

"So what's your plan?" she said casually as a waiter approached.  
"I'm just here to pick her up," Farley said to the waiter. "Don't need anything, brah."  
The waiter smiled and left; Anna tried not to roll her eyes. _Brah!_ Oh, please.

"Well, ordinarily, I'da waited till you left the hotel and grabbed you then, but I noticed you took a suitcase down to reception, so I'm guessing you'll be checking out directly after you have broken your fast, right? I hadta work a bit faster than I planned. So you'll just come with me after breakfast and I'll give you a nice clean kill. An honourable death, babe."  
Anna snorted.   
"Yeah. Um, no, I'm going to pass. Kill me now and be done with it."  
"Nah, not doing that here," he said.  
"Well, I'm not going with you."  
He pushed the gun against her knee.   
"Death is inevitable, Quinn. Lucky are those of us who may choose its time."  
He sounded like he was quoting something. Probably some Buddhist text. Or _Surfing for Dummies_.  
"Nope," she said. "Don't want to die today, sorry."

She dribbled another spoon of honey across her muesli. Its surface was a shiny yellow now, barely any flakes could be seen.  
Farley looked flummoxed.   
"Yeah, well, not your call. Because I will shoot you here but you don't want these nice people to have to clean your insides up, do you? Do the right thing and come with me. It'll be over in a second."

Anna wrinkled her nose and peered into her bowl.  
"Gawd," she cried in disgust. "What is that?"  
She poked at it with her spoon.   
"Je- _sus_ ," she said. "That's revolting."  
Farley leaned forward to look and she pushed the bowl towards him.  
"What?" he said. 

Quick as a flash, she jammed the bowl in his face. Sticky honey and muesli flakes covered his beard and one of his eyes.  
"- da fuck?" he shouted and he must have dropped his gun as there was a sharp ping when it went off under the table, the bullet ricocheting off the side of the pool and disappearing in the undergrowth.   
The gardener looked up.   
She threw the contents of the little coffee pot at him and he yowled, reaching out to grab her, but she ducked under the table to grab her handbag and his gun and ran, leaving him stumbling, trying to wipe the mess out of his eyes, looking for his gun under the table. 

Anna wove through the tables, fishing in her bag for the wad of cash she always kept on her, before racing up to the reception. She threw a thousand dollars on the cash desk.  
"Annika Smith. Four nights, keep the change," she said and pulled her bag off the bellhop's cart beside reception.

The receptionist opened her mouth to say something but she was sprinting across the carpet, pulling the bag behind her. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Farley storm into the lobby, wiping his face with a large cloth napkin. When he saw her, he gave chase. And years of being outdoors had made him fast. Under her purse, Anna gripped the gun tightly and waved at a taxi with the other hand; there weren't many people about so early in the morning but there were CCTV cameras everywhere, witnesses and innocent civilians on their way to work, sweeping the streets or waiting for a bus at the stop across the road from the hotel. The cab driver, leaning against his vehicle, stubbed out his cigarette calmly and slowly and loped around to the driver's door as Anna tore across the plaza, her suitcase bumping on the stones.

Farley was sprinting behind her.   
Not yelling, not shouting, silently sprinting with the speed of a man who was used to running, his face set and determined, his arms close to his chest as his long legs covered ground faster than hers. He slid to a halt just a couple of metres away when Anna pointed her purse at him, showing just the tip of the gun underneath.  
"No," she said.   
Behind her, the driver opened the trunk of the car and indicated the suitcase by her side, staring curiously at the silent stand-off.  
"You won't shoot me here," Farley said.  
"Watch me," she said.

Behind her, a taxi pulled in and a couple of tourists got out, pushing politely past, with their bags in hand.  
"You won't dare – " he said and lunged at her, catching her off-guard.  
"Oi! Leave the lady alone!" shouted the cab driver as Farley carefully wrestled the gun out of her hand, gripping her wrist so tightly she yelped in pain.   
He stood back, pointed it at her.  
" _Dios mio,_ " the cab driver shrieked. " _Ayuda!_ Help! Help!"

Anna stepped back, looking behind her for the kerb.   
As she did another car pulled in and she stepped aside instinctively. Behind Farley, a couple of uniformed security guards were rushing across the plaza, shouting in Spanish and English.  
"Sorry about this," he said, raising his gun.

Anna heard a sharp whistle as a bullet flew past and it hit him square in the chest. He looked at her, appalled, before he collapsed in a neat bundle. 

She turned and saw John Wick in the car behind her.  
He raised an eyebrow.  
"Are you fucking shitting me?" she growled and threw her suitcase in the back and herself on top of it.  
John put his foot to the gas and sped off.  
"Hey," he said in greeting.   
It was the second time today she'd been addressed like that, and she liked it no better than the first time.  
"Fuck off, John," she snapped.  
He looked at her in the rearview mirror and smiled.


	11. Chapter 11

Anna got out of the car and dusted herself down, then used her sleeve to wipe the door and handle.

John looked at her discreetly while he did the same.   
Her hair was longer than he'd ever seen it before, brushing off her shoulders. And it was darker, with a few blond highlights that had grown out a couple of inches, as though she couldn't quite decide whether she was blond or ... dirty blond? Mouse brown? John wondered if he'd ever actually seen her with her natural hair colour and decided that he probably never had. When they first met, her hair had been a harsh platinum blond that had – along with the other sharper, brasher aspects of her personality and appearance – eventually been smoothed and tamed. She'd finally been talked into having it dyed a more discreet and subtle shade of honey blond, and in the years that followed, she'd tried almost every shade of brown along the spectrum, from chestnut to black.

Anna straightened up, pulling her ancient blue backpack out of the suitcase, the one that contained anything she needed to flee. John nodded and took her hand. They walked away from the car, down the alleyway where they'd parked, at a casual saunter. The car was parked along a busy street, bustling with small shops just starting to open for the day. John had left the keys in the ignition; he was pretty sure the car would be gone by lunchtime. 

Beside him, he could feel Anna simmer with rage. She was looking straight ahead, trying to not catch his eye but also maintain the pretence of a couple just going for a stroll before breakfast, not a care in the world. John squeezed her hand. Against the odds, he was glad to see her again. She muttered something in response.  
"Sorry?" he said.  
"My shoes," she enunciated. "I always have to leave behind my new fucking shoes."  
He was relieved; he thought she might be angry about ... well, there were plenty of good reasons for her to be angry.

He hailed a taxi and they jumped in.  
"Airport, please," he said to the driver and turned to Anna.   
She looked pointedly out the window, so he reached out and took her hand again. She responded by gripping his so hard that the bones moved. He hissed in pain and drew it back. When the driver looked in the rear-view mirror, she smiled at him beatifically, still ignoring John. They drove to the airport in silence and John checked the departure boards. The next flight to the continental US was departing soon, so they hurried to the ticket desk and bought tickets. 

As was their wont, Anna pretended to weep into a tissue and John grimly explained to the assistant that there had been a death in the family and they needed to leave immediately. With a few clicks, they had first class seats to Orlando and the lady behind the desk had furnished Anna with a new packet of Kleenex. 

Grabbing their tickets, he pulled Anna behind him and they hurried to the gate.  
"Always works," he said.  
Silence.  
"Anna," he began, "I'm sorry. But I can't get into this with you here. When we get to Florida, we can talk about this but you know..."  
"You don't need to tell me," she said and met his eyes finally. She mustered him up and down. "I know, John. We're working. What did Michael Black use to say? _Can the personal crap till the job is done_ , right? Consider it canned."

The lady from the check-in desk walked past to her colleagues at the gate and Anna sniffed into her tissue.  
"But you are in deep shit when we get to Florida," she said. "I'm giving you fair warning, Wick."  
And she turned abruptly away to stare out the window.

x xx 

John placed his overnight bag on the bed and turned to face Anna. 

Startled, he realised she was right behind him and before he could open his mouth to say something, she shoved him roughly on the bed, scrambled onto his chest and put her knife to his throat.  
"What the fuck, John?" she growled.

He whacked the knife out her hand and it skittered across the tiled floor, banging against the floorboards.   
Anna moved to pounce after it, but he threw her easily on the floor and lunged for the weapon.  
"What the fuck, Anna?" he returned.

She threw herself at him again but he pushed her easily away; he'd fought her often enough to know her tricks. He knew that, in a worst case scenario, he could just block her till she became so frustrated she'd do something stupid, but he hoped it wouldn't come to that. He was tired, worn out by the morning's excitement, and wanted to close his eyes and get some sleep. Instead he had to grapple with the fury who was seemingly intent on doing him bodily harm.

Anna picked herself up off the floor, her face set in a frown, rubbing an elbow.   
She seemed to consider attacking him again, then thought the better of it.  
"Seriously, John," she repeated. "What the fuck were you thinking? The contract?" she reminded him when he raised an eyebrow inquiringly.  
 _Shit,_ he thought, _so it was more than just the abandoned shoes._  
"Yeah," he said, standing up straight. He looked at the knife and tossed it on the bed. "I'm sorry, Annie."

Her mouth opened and closed as she struggled to form words.   
"Sorry?" she managed finally. "You're _sorry_?"  
He shrugged and she mocked him, rolling her shoulders dramatically.  
" _I'm sorry, Annie_ ," she repeated in an eerie approximation of his voice. "Fuck off, John. You put out a contract on me?"  
He threw his hands up.   
"It's just ... I know. I know, Anna. It was a mistake, okay? I'm sorry."  
She stared at him, agape.   
"I need some better explanation than 'it was a mistake', shithead."

He sighed deeply.   
"It was just ... the whole thing, the whole mess with the High Table was hard, Annie. It took a lot – it took a lot out of me. I didn't want to be involved in all of this; I didn't want you involved either. And it took a lot longer than I expected. So when it was done and I had my exoneration, I waited a bit, in case I was still being followed. Finally – finally, I made my way to Seattle. I waited outside the bookstore and then I saw you with that guy ..."

He stopped. 

He'd waited in a doorway across the busy road, sheltering from the pouring rain beneath a black umbrella. She came out shortly after closing time and turned, her back to him, to lock the door and pull down the shutters. He watched her go up on her toes to reach the shutters and just as he made to move across the road, a large man stepped up beside her and pulled the shutters roughly down. 

John's hand had flown to his gun, but the man just bent and kissed her on her lips. She'd slapped his chest lightly, jovially, and pulled the hood of her jacket up. They linked arms and left, getting into a car the man had parked at the edge of the street. John followed them home – to the man's house, he presumed, as he'd already checked out the little apartment Anna lived in – and from his car, he saw them dart to the porch, where the man briefly patted down his pockets for his keys, Anna leaning against the doorframe, talking animatedly. When he opened the door, he put a hand in the small of her back and they went inside, shutting the door – and John – behind them.

He had sat in the car, suddenly aware of every ache from every foot and fist and bullet that had rained upon him in the past few months. The broken cheekbone, now healing slowly. The knee that had been savagely kicked; his lower back only now recovering from some brutal blows.   
And through the lighted window, he saw Anna moving around this strange man's kitchen, gathering ingredients from the fridge and cupboard, which they proceeded to prepare together. John had felt his temper rise like the mercury in a thermometer.  
"Bitch." He felt the breath catch in his throat and thumped the wheel. "Fucking betraying bitch."

He drove back to his hotel room, a beige and brown cell for business travellers, where he took a shower, his head whirring. When he came out, he picked up his phone, dialled the number of the Agency and let it ring once before angrily pressing the cancel button and throwing it on the bed. 

He stared at it for a minute or two, trying to banish the image of the light smack, the casual intimacy, until he snatched his phone up and redialled. This time someone answered on the first ring and without thinking it through, he gave his number, then hers and set up the contract.  
"Open or closed?"  
"Closed."  
He didn't want a free-for-all.  
"Specific agent?"  
"Someone with a lot of experience. Someone good."  
It would need to be someone really good.  
"Fine," the operator said. "The contract will be sent to this number. We will accept an electronic signature or you can fax it back to us. You know the procedure, sir."

He thanked her and hung up.   
Almost instantaneously, the phone vibrated and he opened the email, read the contract and went down to the front desk, where the receptionist showed him the printer and fax machine and discreetly left him alone while he used them. He tore the send receipt off the machine and stomped back to his room, yanking the door shut behind him.  
He hated her so much back then.

Now, embarrassed, John cleared his throat.   
In front of him, she was pulling at the ends of her hair, watching him angrily.  
"I was angry, Anna. I'm sorry. That's all I can say."   
He shrugged helplessly, not knowing what more to add.  
"If you fucking shrug one more time, I might box your damn ears."

Despite her fighting words, her eyes had become a bit glassy and the tip of her nose had reddened, sure signs that she was trying not to cry. She was not one to cry often and she usually tried to hide it by being extra dismissive or defiant.  
"I mean: a contract, John. A fucking contract. After all we've been through, you open a _contract_ on me because you think I have a boyfriend. What kind of fucked up is that? No, don't answer. We've known each other so long, I tend to forget what a sociopath you are."

She sat on the bed. It had a cotton cover with a quilted pattern and she picked at a thread, unravelling it, her head bowed over her destructive work so he wouldn't see her furiously blinking back tears.  
"I mean," she continued, "Pfeiffer was a two-timing bastard, but at least he had the balls to try to do the job himself. But you? You open a fucking contract."  
"I would've never been able to do it myself," he said quietly. "And I was angry, Annie. I just overreacted. I was stupid and I regret it."  
"Coward," she snapped.

He sat down beside her and she didn't raise her head, just moved over a bit as the bed depressed under his weight and furtively wiped her cheek with the tip of her index finger. He resisted the urge to apologise again.  
Instead he said,  
"So who told you?"  
"Told me what?" she mumbled.  
"About the contract?"

She looked up at him, frowning.   
"Who told me about it? The fucking professional who showed up in my kitchen one morning, that's who, you shithead. Seriously, John. Who the fuck do you think told me about it?"  
He heard a buzzing in his ears.   
"The professional who showed up in your kitchen?" he repeated. "Why did a professional show up in your kitchen?"  
"Jesus, John!" she shouted. "Have you had a couple too many blows to the brain or what? You opened a _contract_ on me, remember? A side effect of having a contract on your head is the tendency to find fucking agents in your kitchen. Or at the breakfast table of your hotel."  
She made a _d'oh_ face at him, smacking her forehead with the heel of her hand.

John stood up and rested a hand on the dressing table.  
"Yeah," he said, "Well, that wasn't my contract. I cancelled mine immediately. I told you, it was a stupid mistake, an overreaction."

He'd gone back to his hotel room in a haze of rage, the kind of rage that had always made him do bad things, stupid things. In his hand was the send receipt from the fax machine. He read off the number of the Agency again and again, feeling his heartbeat start to slow. Then, sickened to his stomach, he picked up the phone and rang in, rattling off his ID number. He cancelled the contract, agreeing to pay all and any fees already incurred, cancellation with immediate effect. Then he'd hung up, packed his bag and left Seattle. 

He flew back to New York to settle his affairs and decided to visit Helen's parents before making his next move. As far as he was concerned, Anna Quinn was over. Finished. A chapter in his life with _The End_ written underneath it in bold.

Except, apparently, it wasn't quite that simple.  
"You're sure you cancelled?" she said, watching him root in his pocket for his phone.  
"Yes," he said shortly.  
"You're certain?"  
"Yes."  
"Positive?"  
"Anna!" he snapped and she subsided into silence. 

He dialled the Agency and gave his ID number.  
"I'm sorry, sir," the receptionist said. "That number does not exist."  
He looked over at Anna and pressed the speaker button.  
"Try it again," he said and dictated his ID number and his agent number.  
"I'm sorry, sir," the receptionist said, "but we have no agent listed under this number."  
"This is John Wick," he said. "Someone has been messing with my file; there is simply no way I don't know my own number. I want to speak to whoever is in charge."  
"I'm sorry, sir," she repeated, beginning to sound a little like a broken record. "But if you are on our books, you know that you will have to present yourself in person in order for us to verify your account."  
"There is an open contract in my name," he said "And I did not authorise it." 

He heard her clicking on her keyboard.  
"I am not at liberty to confirm that, sir," she said but something in her voice told him she had just read through the details. "However, any contracts currently open with our Agency have all been confirmed and signed by the consignees, of this I am absolutely sure. Should you have an issue with this, I would recommend that you appear here in person so we may verify your personal details and close any unwanted contracts."  
"And can you put it on hold till I cancel it in person?" he asked.  
"I'm sorry, sir," she said as Anna made strangling gestures with her hands. "Until such a time, the contract will remain open."  
He pressed a button on his phone and turned to Anna.  
"Don't say you're sorry," she said. "I might kill the next person who says 'I'm sorry'."

She flopped back down on the bed and put her head in her hands.  
"So there's a contract on my head till you get back to New York and go in there to physically rip it up?" she asked wryly. "Yay, me."  
"We'll spend the night here," John said decisively. "We'll take a flight to New York tomorrow and sort this out, I promise."

She sighed, martyred, but John ignored it.  
"Do you want me to get another room?"  
Anna shook her head.   
"Nope," she said. "This is your fucking fault. You take first watch while I get some rest."  
"I'm tired, Anna," he said quietly. "I need some sleep."  
He pulled off his t-shirt and kicked off his shoes, dragging back the cover on the bed.  
"Well, I'm not sleeping with you," she said crossly.  
"Yeah, sure," he said, dropping his pants on the floor. "Of course. You wouldn't want to cheat on your boyfriend, right?"

It was a childish dig but he didn't look around to see how she took it, just rolled into bed and pulled up the cover.  
"Fucker," he heard her say as she left the room.  
He closed his eyes and slept.


	12. Chapter 12

"A clerical error?" Winston said, peering over the top of his bifocals.  
John nodded silently.  
Winston glanced at Anna, who was standing by the window, staring out at the rainy night. She was detached, aloof, her pale face reflected in the dark glass. While Wick was sporting a healthy tan against the crisp, snowy white of his tailored shirt, Anna was ashen, with dark rings under her eyes.  
"The Agency made a clerical error," Winston said again, just to make sure things were clear.

Earlier that day, Mr Charon had discreetly informed him that Miss Quinn and Mr Wick had checked in together, separate rooms, one night, and had requested he make an appointment for them at the Agency. Winston had wasted no time phoning John - less loquacious than Miss Quinn, indeed, but also less mercurial and therefore less likely to tell him to fuck off on a whim - to find out what had brought them both back to New York.  
Together.

"A clerical error," John confirmed.  
"Jesus!" Anna snapped. "How often does it need to be said? A fucking clerical error, yes. According to Mr Dubarry, they changed software and updated their encryption shit and some agents' information was wiped. When John put out a contract on me - "  
She glared at the back of his head and he cast his eyes down to where his long fingers rested in his lap.  
"- after John put a contract on me, there was some kind of glitch in their system that switched it to open and, apparently, some agents' info was wiped."  
"How many people's details were lost?" Winston asked sharply.  
John glanced up at him, opened his mouth to speak and then shut it again.  
Winston looked from Wick's inscrutable face to Anna's angry one.  
"Just ours," she said. "Handy, eh?"  
"And the system wasn't hacked?"  
"Dubarry swears it's impossible."  
Winston looked at John again.  
"Well," he said, smoothing the brocade vest that covered his portly midriff. "Well, well."  
"We had to re-register," John said. "Biometrics, signature, everything."  
"- even though I told them I'm out of the game," Anna snapped. "But apparently I have to be _on_ their books in order to be taken _off_ their books. The fuckers."  
"I see," Winston said.  
Once again, he looked from one to the other. Anna's face lit up blue, white, blue as an ambulance passed on the street below, then the room subsided back into its gloomy lull.

The silence that followed seemed to rouse Anna.  
"I need a drink," she said to no one in particular, pulling herself away from the window. "This whole fucking thing _stinks_."  
And she left the room, trying to slam Winston's door behind her, to no avail. It closed with a heavy _whoosh_ and the two men heard her growl of disgust as it smoothly closed.

Winston looked at John, who seemed in no hurry to leave. He twirled around on his chair and pulled out a bottle of brandy and two tumblers from the shelf behind his desk. John watched him wordlessly as he splashed a generous measure into each glass and pushed one across the table.  
"You put a _contract_ on Anna Quinn?" Winston said.  
John winced, then took a sip of the brandy.  
Winston waited, then tried again.  
"You put a contract on Anna Quinn _because_ ...?"  
"Because I was angry," the other man answered coolly and Winston involuntarily shivered.  
John Wick had never said much, but sometimes he could look at you in a way that spoke volumes: his brown eyes, for an instant, for a fraction of a second, could flash a rage, a sorrow or a pain that never failed to touch Winston, like an icy finger on bare skin. Then it would disappear, leaving that mask of composure that Wick used to cover how he really felt, sometimes making Winston question what he had even seen.

John seemed to feel more needed to be said, because he shifted in his chair and said, "I saw her ... I saw her with that other man. And she looked happy. Everything I had done - almost everything I had done - was to get back to her. But when I did, she had moved on."  
He looked up at Winston and there it was again - that flash of emotion, that look of raw pain, - before he sank his head to stare into his brandy glass.  
"It was impulsive. It was _stupid_. Michael Black would have smacked me across the back of the head."  
He smiled wryly.  
"But I wanted to hurt her, the way she hurt me. I reasoned that they wouldn't have anyone good enough to get her - maybe just give her a fright. Maybe just remind her that none of us can get out of this and live happily ever after, right?"  
He looked up at Winston, his face pinched, questioning.  
"Right," the older man replied. "I'm afraid not."

"Anyway," John continued, raising the glass to his lips. "It took me all of, what? Two minutes? To realise I'd made a mistake. I cancelled it immediately. In fact, Dubarry claims that the fact that I cancelled it so quickly is what fucked up their software."  
John chuckled softly.  
"Yeah, so she ended up with Kesha Washington's niece in her kitchen one night, then figured out where to come looking for me."  
He shrugged.  
"As she does. Guns blazing, Irish temper flaring. In the meantime, because the Washington girl hadn't taken her out in the required timeframe, the contract went open and everyone on their books got word that Anna Quinn was fair game. When I found her, she had a professional on her tail - guy by the name of Farley?"  
Winston nodded.  
"Known to me," he confirmed. "Not a regular here. We're too bourgie for his tastes, I hear. And you just ... ran in to Miss Quinn? Randomly bumped into her?"  
Wick took a sip of his brandy.  
"She tracked me to Puerto Rico," he confessed. "I don't know how. But she was starting that thing she does - you know, when she starts torturing you, haunting you? I wanted to cut that short. I knew she'd be in a hotel somewhere, I knew she'd be up at the crack of dawn and I figured I might spot her out for a jog on the beach or something. I was literally looking for a parking space when she ran out of some hotel dragging a suitcase behind her."

John looked across at Winston and a smile crossed his face as he thought about it. Then he shook his head, as though to shake off the memory.  
"And now she's pissed," John finished, draining his brandy. He pushed the empty glass back over to Winston who reached for the bottle, but John shook his head.  
"She'll get over it," Winston said more confidently than he felt. "She always does. And what next? Are you going back to Puerto Rico?"  
"No." Wick said. "Burnt all my bridges there. But things were getting ... tricky anyway."  
He sounded a little wistful.  
Winston cleared his throat, indicated the door behind them.  
"And you and Miss Quinn...?"

John raised his eyes to his and there it was again - that look, that instantaneous flare of something that filled his whole face, then disappeared.  
"That was a brief moment in time," he said in that same strange, cool tone. "Too much has happened. Too much water under the bridge."

Winston leaned back in his chair, running his hands over his stomach again. The feel of the threads beneath his fingers was strangely comforting, it gave his hands something to do while he regarded the man in front of him. He had known John Wick since he was little more than a boy, a long-legged youth in a suit that hung from his shoulders, prone to blushing quickly, ducking his gaze if you stared at him too directly. He had filled out, grown into a softly-spoken man of such lethality that some of the newer professionals believed he existed only in legend. He still had the same angular face, the same questioning brown eyes, but with age he had developed a deadly stillness belied the volatility beneath his skin. It was his calm that made him dangerous.

"Are they your words or hers?" Winston asked.  
Wick stood up, not meeting his eye. He pulled at his cuffs, straightened his tie.  
"It was never meant to be, Win," he said. "It never happened in all the years we worked together, why was it going to happen now?"  
He sighed.  
"I was doing a good job of getting over her. _Again_ ," he added with that same wry smile. "No reason why I can't just start over. And Anna - well, Anna seems to have hit the jackpot, right? Found herself a nice guy with a nice family."  
"What she always wanted. What she needs," Winston agreed.  
"What she _deserves_ ," said John firmly.

He nodded at Winston, that odd little bow he made when he felt a conversation had come to a close.  
"You're a good man," Winston said spontaneously.  
It was not something he could say of many in their profession, and he had no doubt that many of the things that John Wick had done were indefensible by any logical standards - but when it came to Anna Quinn, he was, and had always been, a good man.  
John tipped the brim of an imaginary hat and slipped out of the room, leaving Winston's heavy door to full shut with a sound like a sigh.


	13. Chapter 13

_xx Six months later xx_

"You've lost weight," Dan's sister Davina complained. She pulled the ties on the dress and it drew in another inch. "You're getting scrawny, Annika."  
"You worried about the wedding night, babe?" her friend Carolyn asked with a wink.  
Annika grinned at her.  
"Terrified," she joked, trying to stop her hands from balling into fists, stop her nails from digging into the skin of her palms. She breathed deep and made an effort to relax her fingers, let her arms dangle by her waist.

Carolyn sipped her champagne and glanced over at Muriel, who had already kicked off her shoes and made herself comfortable on the velvet couch of the bridal salon. Muriel grinned and finished her own champagne, leaning over to take another from the side table. Annika's boss was happy to give her time off from the bookstore for dress fittings - as long as she could go, too.  
"Well, now, this is inconvenient," the sales assistant said crossly, removing a pin from her mouth. "I don't normally say this to brides, but could you eat up a little, sweetheart? There just isn't time to have this altered again before the wedding. When is it? Saturday? That's just two days away, hun."

Annika looked at herself in the full-length mirror without much pleasure.  
Her hair had grown longer and she'd stopped dyeing it, so she was back to the dirty blond colour she'd last seen as a teen. She hadn't lost weight on purpose, it just seemed like the closer the wedding came, the harder it was becoming to play the happy bride-to-be. Her wedding dress was a simple shift dress in off-white, the plainest dress she could find in the entire store, and it now hung on her frame like an empty sack. Had it been up to her, she wouldn't have worn a wedding dress at all, but Dan's family had been so appalled by the idea that there was to be a small dinner and not a huge party that she felt she had to at least compromise on the dress.

"I'm too old and you're too divorced for a poofy white dress," she'd grumbled in private to Dan, who'd managed to wrangle her consent for a big barbecue at his parents' house the day after the wedding.  
If it had been up to him, they would've had a huge reception with a live band and a sit-down meal for dozens of people - all of his extended family, friends, customers and well-wishers.  
The thought made Annika's hands fly reflexively into tense fists, made her breathing quick and shallow.  
"I wanna see you in a poofy white dress," Dan teased. "Like a gigantic marshmallow. Like a Barbie doll: Bookstore Barbie Gets Married. How about that?"  
And she'd playfully elbowed him while he laughed his deep chuckle. If it hadn't been for his gentle good humour, she would have bolted long ago, but every time she felt that wave of panic lap, lap up against her fingertips, his teasing laughter could make it subside. 

In the end she'd found a dress that was simple enough to suit her purpose and white enough to suit everyone else's.  
Dan's mother and his sister Davina acknowledged her choice with a kind of martyred acceptance, instantly discussing ways to make the plain frock look more festive – grandmother's pearls. Some diamanté earrings. Killer heels!  
Annika pinned a smile to her face and allowed them to dress her like a doll, the bones of her fingers cracking as she flexed them open and shut.

The discord between Inside Ann and Outside Annika was growing and showing itself in her skinny arms and bitten nails. And despite the fact that she felt she was fading away, no one seemed to notice it; it was starting to feel like a kind of recurring nightmare: screaming silently, unheard by anybody. She had played the part of happy bride-to-be so fucking well, she thought, that she was start to lose herself and drown in the fantasy she had created.

Because it was of her own creating: when she returned to Seattle, wan and bitter, Dan had enveloped her in what felt like a blanket of love.  
"I'm so sorry for your loss," he'd murmured into her hair when he'd picked her up at the airport, wrapped her in his muscular arms, pulling her in so his jacket covered her, still radiating his warmth.  
She had looked up at him blankly, stunned.  
"I hope your mom's passing was peaceful," he said.  
And then she remembered.  
"Yes, yes it was," Anna - now Annika again - replied.  
He stroked her face so softly that she almost cried.  
"I know," he said. "It marks the end of a ... difficult chapter of your life. But we can start a new one now, Ann. Together."  
Annika had swallowed the lump in her throat and allowed him to lead her out of the airport to his waiting car. 

Dan treated her as though she were convalescing from a long illness; from a broken heart.  
He cooked for her, he made her warm drinks. He covered her in a blanket on the sofa, stroked her hair. He made love to her gently and slowly, and she let him, feigning enthusiasm when all she really wanted to do was crawl away and sit in a corner with her legs drawn up around her knees. But as the days passed, she started to come out of what felt like some kind of stupor: she stopped jumping at every tiny noise. She started waking only ten times a night, not twenty. She went out for walks with Dan and the dogs, she noticed the leaves were starting to blossom, she noticed the flowers were starting to bloom.  
Something loosened its grip on her.  
It felt - irrationally, she knew, - that she had started to breathe again.

And Dan beamed proudly, delighted at her progress. Annika realised that he was tending her, like a flower, and she told him so.  
Dan had laughed out loud, laughed so hard that he'd doubled over ("A flower? You, a _flower_?") - which made her laugh, too. Real laughs, not the bitter, snarky bursts of laughter that she had directed at John in New York, but the deep belly-laughs of two people who could stand barefoot in the lemon-yellow sunlight of a Saturday morning, complicit in their mirth.

Annika was relieved to find that she still liked him; she was relieved to feel a warmth around her heart when he enveloped her in a hug – she presumed this meant that she loved him; she didn't know for sure.  
She'd thought she'd loved Mark Pfeiffer but she had been sorely wrong about that.  
She'd thought she'd loved John Wick but that seemed to cause her nothing but pain.  
So maybe this was love, this feeling of security, this feeling of safety? This feeling that, if she focussed on Dan himself, she might be happy – as long as she didn't think about any of the other stuff, the crap that hung around her thoughts like a hangover and crept into her dreams unbidden. All of the hidden stuff, all of the things she had to bury because they represented a world that was beyond the comprehension of anyone in her new life.

When Dan produced the little red ring-box two weeks after her return, she hesitated a second or two to make certain she knew what she was doing: yes, this was it.  
This was a conscious decision, choosing a stable, happy life with in a stable, happy relationship. This was healthy. This was _right_.  
So she said yes; Dan whooped for joy and pulled her up so they could go phone everyone they knew straight away. Annika looked at the ring on her finger, turning it so that the stones caught the light, and she had a sudden vision of Helen Wick's hand, a long, long time ago in the foyer of The Continental, showing the ring her fiancé had picked out. John, like Dan, had probably gone to the store, pored over little velvet trays of rings, and chosen one to suit the woman he loved.  
Annika looked at the three square-cut diamonds in her ring and wondered - a momentary wondering - what kind of ring John would have pick out for her.  
"Do you like it?" Dan asked, worried.  
Jolted from her thoughts she looked up at him, smiling.  
"I love it," she said honestly.  
She did: it was an unpretentious, old-fashioned ring. It was the kind of ring you passed on to your daughters and theirs. It was a forever ring.

She twisted it back and forth on her finger, feeling its weight.  
_A forever ring,_ she thought. 

She felt a chill; she hoped it was anticipation, not dread.

x x x 

But now, the day before her wedding, Annika felt panicked, short of breath again.  
Despite her insistence on a small wedding dinner with only immediate friends and family ("I don't have a lot of people to invite," she'd pleaded, "so let's just keep the guest list really tiny"), Dan's relatives and his many friends were getting around the lack of dinner invitations by turning up at the house with flowers and cake and presents, good wishes and pretty cards - and stuff for the fridge and freezer for the barbecue the next day. They were going to celebrate the wedding, whether Annika wanted it or not.

Dragged along by the festive riptide, she found grinning and bearing it harder and harder. When she returned to the house after the dress fitting, she found an enormous wedding cake on the counter top; she'd stopped in horror but the assembled company – Dan's parents, his aunt Monica, four of his cousins and two old friends from high school – clapped and cheered, mistaking her horror for delight.  
"Surprise!" aunt Monica cried. "I made it for the barbecue so we get some cute photos of you two cutting the cake!"

The grin, now manic, was starting to pain Annika.  
She murmured something appreciative, admired Monica's fondant flowers and tried to back out of the room.  
"Not just yet," Dan's mother said and gripped her arm. "We've got one more surprise for you!"  
"Oh," Annika said, smiling brightly. "Another surprise? Oh, my."  
Her heart sank. In her world, surprises had never meant anything good.  
"We know you don't have anyone to walk you down the aisle – oh, I know, you're not getting married in a church, but every girl wants her Dad to give her away – "  
Did they? Annika couldn't remember her own father very well; her abiding memory was that he used to give her money to buy him cigarettes and she could keep the change.  
"- so we wanted you to have someone that would be a father figure on your big day," Dan's mom said, leading her towards the living room.  
Annika felt cold fingers stroke her heart.  
"So we asked Muriel – "  
"No," she said instinctively and tried to pull away, she looked behind her, trying to see if she could make a run for the kitchen door, but the hallway was crowded with people, all of them dying to see her react to their big surprise. 

Mrs Parsons looked at her, slightly unsure, then threw open the living room door.  
"So we asked Muriel if she could invite her brother down for the weekend. I know you worked for him for years and I was sure he would be thrilled to step in and give you away."

Annika gulped as the man on the couch stood up, brushed some imaginary fluff off his jacket, before extending a manicured hand to her.  
"My dear little bird," he said. "My warmest congratulations on your impending nuptials."  
"Thank you, Winston," she replied as the room filled with clapping and laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading along, thank you for the comments! It feels like the world is going a bit mad right now, so I'm happy you've joined me in this universe for a bit of distraction.


	14. Chapter 14

"Well, you look ... thin," Winston said.  
"Gee, thanks," Anna replied sardonically. 

They were taking a turn around the garden - that's what Winston called it. Anna was pretty sure the last time she'd heard of someone taking a turn around a garden was in a Jane Austen novel; yet here they were, walking along Dan's flowerbeds, stopping to admire some of the plants in bloom.  
"I could have said _gaunt_ , little bird. Or _haggard_. Or _careworn_ – take your pick. Are you absolutely certain this is what you want?"  
"I think so," she replied, then repeated it, like a question: "I think so?"  
Winston bent to rub the leaves of a plant between his fingers.  
"Is that verbena? I can never be fully sure ..." he said thrusting them under her nose.  
Anna shrugged. She had little or no interest in gardening.  
"So," he said, straightening up, "you intend to marry this lumberjack – "  
"Carpenter," she corrected.  
"- and spend a lifetime working away in your library – "  
"Bookstore."  
"- surrounded by this enormous tribe of well-meaning, interfering in-laws and his motley crew of friends and acquaintances?"  
"They're really nice people," Anna said weakly.

"It sounds wonderful," Winston said. "And yet you look ... frightful."  
She was silent, plucking leaves off a nearby plant till Winston removed her hand with a gentle tut-tut.  
"Dan is a good person," she said finally. "He truly is a good person."  
"Well done you," replied Winston wryly. "My knowledge of the female psyche might be rusty, but I understand a good man is hard to come by."  
She swung to face him, her face drawn.  
" _I'm_ not a good person," she cried, tapping her chest to underscore her words.

Winston looked at her: her face was pinched, as though she were in pain.  
"He has no idea what I've done, Win. Shit, he can't even imagine what I'm capable of."  
"Maybe he won't find out. And even if he does: you say yourself he's a good man, he'll understand - "  
"No one can understand," Anna interrupted. "I can't understand myself."  
She shook her head.  
"He will find out. And he will leave me."  
"Anna," Winston said, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Why should he find out?"

She gave a curt, hoarse laugh.  
"Because eventually I will tell him," she said. "He's already starting to chip away at my backstory: why don't I have any family? Any siblings? Any cousins? Where did I go to school? Why don't I have friends from back east?"  
She wriggled out from under his touch.  
"I thought I could do this," she said, "I thought I could manage it. I mean, I went back to school and I started a new life; I held down a job and I made friends. I guess the difference was, nobody cared enough about me to want to know more. I managed to keep everyone at a distance and that made it easy. But this ...  
She paused.  
"He wants a _family_ , Win."  
"Have you agreed to it?"  
"No, of course not, but he thinks he can make me change my mind."  
She smiled bitterly, then said again, "He's going to leave me, isn't he?"

Winston could not answer her. Instead he looked up, buying time.

"It rains a lot over here," he said, wrinkling his nose in distaste.  
"No more than in New York," she replied distractedly.  
"But the skyscrapers do a wonderful job of keeping the worst of it at bay."  
Anna rolled her eyes.  
"Yes," she agreed mockingly, "they're like over-sized umbrellas."  
They stared at the cloudy Seattle sky.

"You know he'll leave me," she blurted. "And I can't blame him. The person he thinks he's marrying is not the person I am."  
"You _are_ this person, little bird. You are. You are loyal, caring, loving - in a rather bizarrely thorny way, but loving nonetheless. Why don't you just marry this man and be happy?"  
"I've tried, Win - fuck it, I've tried," Anna said and she sounded weary. "But I can't keep the pretence up. It's slowly killing me."

"Fine: I agree. You can't keep this up forever," Winston said, suddenly earnest. "You're failing already and you haven't even tied the knot."  
She nodded.  
"Now Jonathan did it correctly: he never lied to his wife, he just never told her the truth. He didn't have to worry about forgetting his name or getting his story straight, he stuck to the truth closely enough to circumvent any awkwardness."  
Anna was silent.  
"Birdie, that was intended as a gracious segue into the subject of Mr Wick. You're supposed to casually say, _'Oh, speaking of John, how is he?_ '"  
"Oh, speaking of John, how is he?" she said mechanically.

Winston eyed her, a brow raised.  
"Fine, actually. He seems to be doing very well indeed. Busy rebuilding his house - that gives him plenty to do. In fact, I met him at the opera with a lady friend a while back."  
He said it lightly, pretending to study the blossoms on the low branches of a tree.  
It gave Anna enough time to gulp, pull herself together.  
"Yeah?" she said. "A _lady friend_? Finally found himself someone, has he?"  
"Lovely woman," Winston said. "She works in the architect's office that he's employed to redesign his house."  
"Like that's not awkward," Anna muttered, a touch more bitterly than she intended.  
"He tells her nothing, I'm sure, and she probably doesn't ask. Just peachy," Winston smiled. "The inscrutable Mr Wick knows how to keep his mouth shut."

Anna muttered something, then looked up and saw Dan and his mother at the kitchen window. They smiled and waved and she remembered to affix her perpetual grin back in place.  
At her fiancè's side, his sister appeared and Davina waved and held up a string of pearls, dangling them between her fingers. She pointed at them and at Anna, giving her a thumbs-up and a wave.  
"Oh, Winston," Anna said in sudden despair. "I'm making a huge mistake, aren't I?"  
Winston hummed and hawed.  
"That's not really for me to say," he said. "As you know, I don't like to interfere in other people's business."  
"You _love_ to interfere in other people's business," she corrected him. "It's practically your hobby."

"Very well," he said. "If you insist: I came here in the hope of seeing you on the cusp of settling into a wonderful new life, free from the shackles of your oh-so-torrid past. But this - "  
He waved a manicure hand in her direction.  
"I have never seen you look as pitiful in your entire life. Not even when that scoundrel Pfeiffer tried to kill you did you look this wretched. I'm sure your lumberjack is a wonderful man, but the strain of pretending to be a Stepford Wife is killing you even now – and you're not even married!"  
"What else can I do?" Anna wailed. "Anna Quinn is dead. Ann Finnerty is dead. Eileen O'Grady is dead. I'm not a cat, I don't have nine lives and I've gone through three already."  
Winston thought about it.  
"You can always leave this behind," he said, "And come back to work. You were an excellent agent, you could work for a couple of years and then maybe go private – I hear there's a lot of good work to be had in Saudi Arabia or Russia. The private sector is really booming, plenty of people need bodyguards."  
"But Anna Quinn is dead," she repeated.  
"Miss Quinn, most people figured out you were alive and well as soon as Mr Wick opened a contract on your head. I doubt anyone will bat an eyelid when you stroll into the Continental, strapped, locked, loaded and ready to go."

Anna sighed deeply. It felt like she was inhaling oxygen for the first time for weeks, for months.  
"So we'll just leave tonight?" she said hopefully. "Or will I fake my death? Suicide? I could park my car by the cliffs or ..."  
"No," Winston said, holding up a hand. "You cannot run away from everything, Miss Quinn. I've planned more than my fair share of your funerals, thank you very much. You will go into that nice young man and tell him that you are making a mistake. You will apologise to his family, pack your bags and leave."  
Anna's heart sank. She'd faced many a near-impossible scenario, but this one was almost overwhelmingly daunting.

"Couldn't you just shoot me?" she asked hopefully. "Or run me over? I don't mind a couple of weeks in hospital."  
"Go inside," Winston said firmly, "and get it over with. You love this man - on some level. Do right by him. Go now, little bird, before someone arrives with a set of turtledoves to be released after your vows or some such nonsense."  
Anna started to trudge towards the house.  
"You could punch me in the face?" she called back.  
"Tempting," he rejoined, "but no. Go do it."

He waited till she went inside, then rubbed the verbena between his fingertips once more. He watched her trudge into the house, like a prisoner on death row, on her way to kill off another iteration of her life.


	15. Chapter 15

"Shouldn't be a problem," Aurelio said and slammed the hood. "Give me a day or two. Okay, okay, a _day_ ," he said, seeing John's face. "You can pick her up tomorrow afternoon. Jeez, John, don't give me that look."  
John smiled.  
"Thanks, Aurelio. I've got a bottle of whiskey with your name on it," he said. "Irish whiskey, picked it up on a stopover in Dublin."

Aurelio wiped his hands on a rag.  
John looked well: he was spending a lot of time outdoors, working on his house, so he had a tan and his hair was longer. His beard had more grey in it than before; he'd aged with the drama of the past couple of years. Still, Aurelio had to admit that he looked better than he'd seen him for a while: healthy, quick to smile and relaxed. Well, as relaxed as Wick could manage to be, like a cat that sleeps with its ears perked, always ready to pounce.  
The mechanic patted the hood of the car and eyed the other man up and down.

"You heard from Quinn?" he said, his voice gruff. No point in beating about the bush.  
John glanced furtively around the busy workshop.  
"No," he said quietly. "Not directly. Winston says she's back in the game and doing well, by all accounts."  
"Yeah, well," Aurelio said, managing to say volumes while being annoyingly elliptical.  
"Yeah, well what?" John asked.  
"She's different, man. Something's changed. Cold, or something. You used to be able to have a laugh with her but now? Not so much. Came in here for a car and it was like we were strangers. Silent, dark - ya know, hair all dyed, too much of that black shit on her eyes. Kinda like ... kinda like an evil raccoon, man."

John nodded, his eyes fixed on Aurelio's face.  
"You think something's wrong?" he asked, dreading the answer.  
Aurelio snorted.  
"Wrong? _Wrong?_ Yeah, yeah, I think something's _wrong_ , John. She's taking on all kinds of shit that no one else will touch. You know the Bowery King sent her into Harlem to take out that little punk who called himself the Dark Prince?"  
He laughed into his rag. "Dumbass. Little fucker, preening around with his homeboys, all armed to the teeth, selling drugs and causing trouble. Dark Prince, my ass! So she went in and took him out. Clean."  
Aurelio whistled admiringly through his teeth.  
"And she don't exactly blend in down there, ya get me?" he added with a knowing nod of his head. 

John looked away. It was none of his business any more, - not his circus, not his monkeys, - but the hairs stood up on the back of his neck.

"Yeah, so, everyone's happy out, John, because there's an agent on the scene willing to do all kinds of jobs no one in their right mind will do. But it's only a matter of time before something goes wrong, man. It's like she doesn't care any more, John."  
He stared at John, narrowing his eyes, imploring him to get it.  
"You even know why she's back?"  
John hesitated, shook his head.  
But he knew.  
Winston had phoned him on the pretext of checking whether he had paid for his dry-cleaning - as if he hadn't, and as if Winston would not know if he hadn't - and the hotelier managed to casually drop it into conversation like a grenade: a little nugget of information, potentially explosive, for John to chew over when he hung up.

"I heard she threw some guy over: some guy wanted to marry her and all, and she done a runner. Then she just turned up in Manhattan two months ago, like nothin' ever happened. Walked into DelRosso's with the Bowery King like she fuckin' belonged there."  
John bit his lip.  
"Winston is flapping around, tryin' to approach the subject delicately with her - ya know, no need to get yourself killed on fuckin' purpose, Quinn. But she told him to fuck off. I done tried, John, but she told me to mind my own fuckin' business, too, or I'd wake up to the taste of the butt of her gun. But you – "  
Aurelio leaned against John's Mustang, absent-mindedly polishing it with the cloth. "- she'll listen to _you_. Just tell her to watch out. Dial it back a notch. No need to go kamikaze on the whole fuckin' thing, you get me?"

John shifted awkwardly.  
"She won't listen to me, Aurelio," he said. "She really won't. And I'm out of the business now, I don't want to get back in. You know what I sacrificed to get out of that whole damn mess, I want nothing to do with it."  
"And yet here you are with me," Aurelio said slyly. "Can't seem to get away from it completely, can you?"  
He grinned.  
"You're the best mechanic I know, Aurelio," he said.  
The other man shrugged.  
"Now, ain't that the truth," he replied dryly.

x x x 

John opened the door to the trailer, looking over at the temporary fence erected around the construction site that would be his future home.  
He tapped the code into the alarm, checked that the traps he'd set were undisturbed, then he slid into the bench beside the tiny dining table, a bottle of water in one hand and his phone in the other. He looked around, appreciating the silence after the noise of Aurelio's workshop. The trailer home was old and creaky, and sprung the occasional leak, but it suited his purposes. He'd installed the security features he needed and kept a gun under the bed; it was a good stop-gap solution. Staying in a trailer wasn't something he'd expected to do for long - too many memories of his childhood, his mother's restlessness and changing stepfathers - but here he was, after half a year, feeling more at home than he had since Helen had died, busy working on site during the day with the site manger and architect.

He enjoyed being around to help supervise the construction team; he had once thought about selling the remains of his property and moving on, but he liked the location and saw no real reason to move. Instead, he found the opportunity to be involved in the design and building of his own house very interesting; he read up on passive houses, went to a couple of lectures about eco buildings at a university in the city and then found an architect's office willing to work with him on his vision. It was progressing slowly but surely, and John was finding it thrilling to get up in the morning and do some hard physical work. Every evening he went to bed exhausted, even falling asleep on the evenings he went to visit Clara, his girlfriend.

 _Girlfriend_ .  
The word stuck in his throat, he couldn't bring himself to say it, even though it was truer of her than it had ever been of Anna or even of Helen, for that matter.  
Clara _was_ actually a girl – no, a woman, of course, but at his age everyone under thirty looked inexorably young. She kept telling him she wanted nothing serious, and John took it at face value: neither did he. She was in her late twenties, and being with her made him feel light-hearted, carefree. She was temping at his architect's office but she wanted to travel; she wanted to spend six months in India before she turned thirty next year. 

John had laughed at the idea at first, but as the summer months peaked and he began to face the prospect of another winter on the Atlantic coast with work on his house slowing to a halt during the colder months, the idea of a few months in India began to seem quite inviting. Clara had invited him along, warning him that he was not to cramp her style – she was all about her freedom, she'd insisted, no man was going to tie her down – but John got the message that she wouldn't be averse to their travelling together. And it would mean that he would be somewhere where he didn't have to check under his bed every night to make sure his gun was still loaded; he wouldn't wake at every rustle or at the sound of a car passing on the road.  
It was very tempting.

John stood up, put the empty water bottle on the counter. He brushed his teeth, looking at his lean face in the small mirror, pulling at his beard as he squeezed out of the narrow cubicle that housed the trailer's toilet and shower. He ducked his head to avoid banging into a low-hanging light fixture - he'd meant to remove it but he had gotten used to it and hadn't bothered, figuring it would function as a warning signal, whacking the head of any potential intruder - got undressed quickly in the chill of the poky bedroom and slid under the covers of the sagging bed. 

He looked at the pockmarked ceiling; thought about Anna, imagined her angry little face, black-rimmed eyes, sliding into some drug dealer's home under the cover of darkness. He could picture her, her slim body sliding along the wall, hidden by shadows and moving on silent feet, watchful and wary, her left hand outstretched to feel her way, gun clutched in her right. He felt - as he always felt when he thought about her - his heart thump harder. It was neither pleasure, nor loss, just a banging behind his ribs that echoed in his ears, like the sound of a heartbeat that wasn't his own.

 _She should have stayed in Seattle,_ he thought. _It would've made everything easier. For everyone._  
He stretched out, the knuckles of his hands hitting the headboard behind him.  
_But when had Anna Quinn ever made anything easier for anyone,_ he reflected with a rueful grin, _much less herself?_  
As he lay in the lumpy bed, his toes touching the end of the bed frame, he looked at the ceiling and tried to think about India; the heat, the colours, the noise, the people.  
The freedom.  
He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, and tried, with little success, not to think of the shadowy figure of Anna Quinn.


	16. Chapter 16

He woke with a start.  
It was dark. Silent.  
“I know you’re there,” he said.

x x x

Once, years before, when working together on a job in Atlanta, they’d spent the night at a hotel that was hosting some sales convention. When John closed his eyes, he could vaguely picture the green and blue logo, but no longer knew what the company was or what they were selling.

The sales team was largely comprised of men: young men, mostly. They wore their best suits, knowing that personal attire would be noted and ranked as they jostled for superiority in their peer group. They were, to a man, clean-shaven and well groomed, their hair long enough to need an abundance of product.  
It looked, as Anna observed, as though someone had cloned a boy-band.

They were sitting at the restaurant bar, reviewing their notes for the following day but Quinn was distracted, watching the men back-slapping and teasing, clinking bottles of beer and glasses of bourbon.  
“You’re not focussing,” John said quietly.  
Her eyes flickered over to him.  
“Too much testosterone,” she answered. “Can’t concentrate.”

And she glanced at one of the men, a young guy with sandy hair gelled casually into place, then she looked down quickly with feigned shyness.  
To John's annoyance, the man gave his friend a discreet nudge and they both looked over at the bar.  
“Stop looking at them,” she hissed.  
“Anna – “ he began.  
“Shut it, John,” was her reply.  
She slid off the barstool, picking up her handbag.

“Need to powder my nose,” she said and took off across the room with that swaying walk she affected when she knew male eyes were on her.  
John watched the two men straighten ties and hair as she approached and he felt that familiar wrenching in his gut. 

He had a crush on her: a crush that should have gone, faded, been battered to death by her consistent disregard and her occasional borderline cruelty towards him, but instead it had persevered long beyond its best-before date. He just liked her company; her teasing made him laugh; he enjoyed debating with her – she had a quick mind and a quicker wit. Even when she was flippant or mean to him, she knew when to apologise: often softly but always sincerely.  
And, God, he thought she was beautiful: her darting blue eyes, her long hands and fingers with their delicate bones, the smattering of freckles on her arms and across her nose...

Essentially – quintessentially – he loved her.  
And she must have loved him back on some level, right? She was doggedly loyal, doggedly protective of him and there was no one he trusted more than Anna Quinn.  
_So why,_ John thought, twisting casually on his bar stool to observe her, _does she do this to me?_

Behind him, Anna was earnestly pushing a strand of hair behind her ear, her handbag clutched under her arm. He knew what she was doing: she was playing a role she often played, the naive blonde, wide-eyed and admiring. She had done it so often in front of him – to get upgrades on airlines, charm waiters, reel in men, - that he could read her body language from afar. She had set her sights on the sandy-haired guy, who probably had a girlfriend at home but was not going to turn down what Anna Quinn was offering.

John drained his bourbon, his stomach sour. He would have slept with her in a heartbeat. He would have loved her, cherished her, but instead she just wanted to fuck random men in anonymous hotels, using them and discarding them like a paper handkerchief.  
He threw a few notes on the bar and went up to bed, not even looking back as he did.

When he woke in darkness, he knew she was there.  
“Anna?”  
“Yes?”

He caught a whiff of soap, shampoo. She’d showered before she returned to their room, washing the traces of her night’s activity off her skin. 

He heard the faint creak of the twin bed across from his and knew she was silently slipping between the clean sheets.  
“Have fun?” he asked bitterly.  
“Yes, I did,” she returned with exaggerated politeness. “Thank you for asking.”  
He didn’t bother to stifle a snort.

“What’s your problem, Wick?” she growled in the darkness.  
“No problem.”  
“You have a problem with me sleeping with some guy?”  
“No,” he lied.  
“Sure you do,” she snapped. “If I were a man, you’d have no issue with me having a one-night-stand. Nah, in fact, you’d probably be trying to get me to give you the details. But because I’m a _woman_ ... “  
“It’s not that,” he said.  
“Oh, isn’t it? When was the last time I hooked up? Like, what, three months ago? Or four?” she said, exasperated. “Jeez, John, it’s so long ago I can’t even remember. I’m not going to win Slut of the Year Award, if that’s what you’re implying.”

It wasn’t what he was implying.  
He turned over in his bed, turning his back to her.  
Quinn cleared her throat and said, “Is it because ... you know... because...?”  
He said nothing.  
“John,” she said firmly. “I told you already, I don’t like you like that. When are you going to get it?”  
She waited for a response that did not come, then her voice became angry.  
“For crying out loud, Wick! Stop making this my problem!”  
“I’m not making it your problem,” he answered. “There _is_ no problem. Forget it.”  
“You’d be better off with someone else,” she said firmly. “Go fall in love with some sweet little innocent, for crying out loud. I don’t know how to make it clearer for you.”

He bit his lip, rolled back over to face her in the darkness.  
“So, what – you’re sleeping with random guys to hurt me on purpose, so I’ll hate you?” he asked, braced for her cutting reply.  
But instead she laughed: “Yeah. Isn’t it working?”  
He hesitated.  
“No,” he admitted.  
“You’re a dumbass, John Wick,” she said, the amusement in her voice clear. 

He was hit in the head by a throw pillow, which he tossed back at her to a satisfying, “Ow!”  
“How did you even know I was here?” she asked, from the other side of the room. “I didn't make a sound.”  
“I always know,” John said. “It’s like I can sense you.”  
He grinned.  
“Dumbass,” she said again as the pillow whizzed past his ear.

x x x

“Quinn?” he said, this time more loudly, his hand snaking to the edge of the mattress, looking for his gun.  
No sound. 

But he knew she was there; he could sense it.

She was suddenly illuminated by the light of her phone screen, her face set in a hard sneer, looking down at him from the foot of his bed, her back against the trailer bedroom’s closet.  
“Don’t even think about reaching for your gun,” she said, and waved it slightly, keeping it focussed on his face.  
“Why are you here, Anna?” he asked.  
His heart was beating faster, he felt a film of sweat break out on his forehead.  
“I missed you,” she whispered.  
“What?” he asked, confused.  
“Did you miss me, too?” Anna murmured and flipped the light switch, flooding the tiny room with the harsh light of a single naked light-bulb.


	17. Chapter 17

John swallowed, rose to his knees in the bed, his hands held up where she could see them.  
Her face looked hollow and, like Aurelio had said, she was wearing too much eye make-up. Her hair was hidden under a black cap, her hands clad in thin black gloves.

“Quinn,” he began placatingly.  
"Wick?" she mocked in the same acquiescing tone.  
"How did you get in here?" he asked, buying time.  
He thought he'd been sure to deadbolt everything.  
"You're a bit paranoid, John, this trailer is like fucking Fort Knox," she replied, not answering his question.  
"Why are you here?" he asked.  
"To kill you, shithead," she said.  
"Is there a contract on me?" 

He thought frantically – that was one of the conditions he'd brokered; no contracts, no professionals. Not that he'd trusted the paper it'd been written on or the blood that had sealed it ... but still.  
"No, John," she enunciated. "There is a contract on _me_."  
He looked at her, not understanding.  
She tapped her chest with her free hand.  
"You fucking did it again. Clerical error? Fuck you." She cocked the gun. "Anyway, enough of this shit. ."  
She jumped, startled, as beside his bed his phone rang, buzzing like an angry hornet, turning in a circle on its own vibration. 

Anna tsk-tsked at the interruption, then raised the gun - but her own phone started to vibrate in her pocket. She extracted it and threw it on the bed. John looked from one phone to another and then helplessly at her.  
“It’a Aurelio,” he said, slowly lowering his arm to push her phone back at her.

"Fuck's sake!" she snarled and whipped it off the bed. "Aurelio? Yes. I know. Winston called me when it opened half an hour ago. Yes, I have Wick right here."  
She waved the gun at him and John raised his arms higher.  
"I didn't open the contract!" he called, hoping Aurelio would hear him. "I swear, I didn't open the contract!"

He heard some frantic squawks from Anna's phone as Aurelio tried to answer him.  
Anna pressed the speaker button and put her phone down as Aurelio tried to wheedle with her not to do it.  
"Anna, please," John said quietly, but she was looking at him in that odd way of hers, head cocked to one side, trying to read him, assess him.  
His own phone was silent for a second or two, then it started again.

"He's done it before, Auri," she called out to her phone. "He got cold feet the last time but now he's got his pretty little girlfriend and a brand new house, he must be getting his shit straightened out."  
"No, no, Anna, I think you're wrong," Aurelio's tinny voice came through the phone speakers, his panic plain to hear.  
John knelt on the bed, moving closer.  
She raised a finger to tell him to stay put.  
John's phone rang again, continued to vibrate, its noise jarringly loud in the tiny room. 

Angrily, she motioned him to pass it to her and she accepted the call.  
"Hold on, Auri," she said looking at the name displayed, "Winston on the other line," and she swiped her finger across the screen of John's phone, pressed the speaker button and threw it on the bed beside her own.  
"Jonathan," Winston said breathlessly, "What on _earth_? A contract on Miss Quinn – again? You know she will find you and this time she will kill you?"  
"I've found him," Anna called into the phone. "And I will kill him. Any last words? Make them quick."  
There was stunned silence from both phones.

"Anna," John said quickly, "just hear me out. Please."  
She said nothing, just continued to stare at him.  
"What if it's not me?" he said. "And for the record, it's not. You know in your heart of hearts I would never do this. But if it's not me, then have you thought about who wants you dead?"  
She watched him.  
"Lots of people want me dead," she said with a mirthless smile.  
"Yeah, then, so the other question is who wants _me_ dead?" he asked quickly.  
"Oh, yes, let's make this about you."

He held up a hand.  
"The first time? Sure, might have been a mistake. Might've been a clerical error, the contract might’ve accidentally been extended because someone mis-clicked. But this time it’s not possible, our biometrics are on the books.”  
Anna looked at him, considering his words.  
“You know they won’t want to admit it," he said, "but they’ve been hacked."  
She eyed him warily.  
"Okay," she said. "I’ll admit that’s bit weird."  
"Right?" he said eagerly. "And anyone who knows you also knows that the first thing you would do is come looking for me. And kill me."

He tried not to gulp as he said it. He'd moved closer to the end of the bed, still on his knees, his hands in the air.  
"This is the second attempt, same procedure as last time,” he said. “Whoever it is can't go after me directly, so they're using you. Either you kill me or I kill you, or we both kill each other. I've got the feeling that they' don't care about the outcome either way – main thing is, someone gets it."  
He put out a hand, his palm upright in front of the barrel of her gun.  
"So the real question is, who wants us both dead?" Anna said.  
The gun clicked.  
John nodded.  
"Please don't kill me, Anna," he said softly. "Please don't."

Slowly, she lowered her gun.  
"Two strikes, John," she said. "Consider this your official warning. If the damn phone hadn't gone off you'd be dead in your bed already."  
"Fuck me, you guys," Aurelio's tinny voice rose from the phone on the bed. "You don't do this to me again, you hear?"  
"I have aged ten years," Winston shouted. "Ten years!"  
Anna swooped up the phones and turned them off.

“Cancel the contract," she said curtly to John. "It's in your name, so cancel it. Like, now."  
Obediently he took the phone and dialled the Agency, while she sat at the edge of the bed, his gun still resting in her lap. 

The woman on the switchboard rattled through the protocol and he used his phone screen to scan his fingerprint as verification. He cancelled the contract and told them to have the paperwork sent over by courier first thing in the morning so he could search for clues about the issuer.

John put down the phone.  
“Cancelled,” he said.  
“Thanks,” she replied shortly. “Nice doing business with you.”  
She left the tiny room abruptly, ducking to avoid the low-hanging ceiling light, and waited by the door of the trailer, nodding at it pointedly to show she wanted him to open it.  
“How did you get in?” he asked and she nodded at the skylight.  
“Through the skylight?” John said. 

It was tiny – but then again, Anna Quinn’s contortionist skills had got them in and out of more than one sticky situation, so why was he surprised?  
He unlocked the door, turned off the alarm, and let her out into the chill night air. Without looking back, she marched away into the darkness, the gravel crunching. He made to close the door but couldn’t stand not knowing - 

“Quinn,” he called after her and the shadowy figure stopped.  
“Yeah?”  
“Do you _really_ think I would kill you?”  
He heard the note in his own voice – a note of pain. 

Anna came back towards him at a run, her pale face reappearing out of the darkness like a ghost’s.  
“Why not?” she snapped. “Why the fuck not? Looks like you’re doing fine to me, John.”  
“Is this what this is about?” he said in a low voice. “You’re angry with me because I’m doing okay? You think I’d kill you to ... _to tidy you up_?”  
“I don’t know any more, John,” she said. “Last time you thought I was doing okay, you tried to have me killed – “  
“- Jeez, Anna, let it go. I felt that way for _thirty seconds_. I got over myself and then I was happy for you. I tried to move on – ”  
“And succeeded,” she muttered.  
“So?” he demanded. “For fucking years you told me to move on. Get over myself and get over you. And I finally did – thanks to Helen.”  
“This is not about Helen.”  
“Then is it about us?” he argued. “Hey, can I remind you that _you_ found someone else? You agreed to marry him, Anna. If that’s not a sign that I should just leave it, I don’t know what is.”  
“Shut it, John,” she said. “Don’t even say it. Fuck you.”  
“Say what? Why are you so angry with me?”

She stepped into the porchlight, her hands punched deep into the pocked of her black jacket.  
“Why am I angry?” she said, her voice rising. “Because you’re good at all of this and I’m not.”  
She waved an expansive hand, taking in the trailer, the vague outline of the building site in the dark of the night.

“Good at what?” he asked.  
“Putting it all in a neat little box in your head and putting a lid on it,” she said, tapping her temple viciously. “Keeping a lid on it. _Ignoring_ it. I had put all my shit in a nice little box and I was doing a good job of keeping it shut, then you burst back into my life and fucking kicked it open.”  
He opened his mouth but found no words.  
Anna stepped closer to where he stood on the step, so she had to crane her neck to look up at him.  
“Now everything has spilled out and I can’t put it back in and it’s _killing_ me – “  
Her face twisted in anguish.  
“- And you’re doing fine!” she said accusingly. “I don’t know who I am anymore and you’re doing fucking _fine_!”  
"Do you want me to suffer, too? Is that it?" he asked quietly.  
" _Yes!_ " she cried. 

John looked down at the top of her head and resisted a sudden urge to place a hand on it, to calm her. Instead he stepped backwards, back into the trailer.  
“Come in, Anna,” he said, suddenly exhausted. “Please just come back inside.”  
She stepped backwards, back towards the darkness beyond the pool of porch-light, then hesitated and pushed past him, back inside.


	18. Chapter 18

Anna pulled off the cap and allowed her hair to tumble down. She’d dyed it a rich, dark brown and it needed to be cut, hanging loosely about her shoulders. 

She stood in the trailer, looking around at its dated interior, feeling the nervous energy zip through her veins like electricity. She really, really wanted to box something. Looking around for something to kick or punch, her eyes lit upon John, who was watching her warily. Whenever she felt like this, jittery with pent-up anger, he seemed to slow and stop, like a foil to her jumpiness, becoming as still as a... as still as a...

“... fucking plinth,” she said out loud.  
John’s eyebrows shot upwards.  
“A plinth?”  
“You’re like a giant fucking plinth,” she snapped. “Like a big block of granite. Our unflappable, implacable Mr Wick.”

John swallowed and moved carefully towards the small fridge.  
“Would you like a beer?” he asked softly. “Some water?”  
Anna shook her head, incredulous.  
“No, I don’t want a beer, Wick, it’s 3 a.m. I want to go to bed.”

He opened his mouth in a silent _O_.  
“Anna,” he began and held up his hands slowly. “I’m not – “  
She stared him down, hand on her hip.  
“Do you think,” she began, slowly and deliberately, “do you think I want to go to bed _with you?_ ”

John waited, knowing that whatever answer he gave would be the wrong one, but Anna wasn’t having it.  
“ _Do you?_ ” she demanded and at that moment, John had a flash of recognition: this is how she was when she taught little kids.  
The force of that icy fury compounded into two sharp words.

“I just – Anna – “ he started but she swung a wild punch, aimed at his face.  
Reflexively, he grabbed her fist, enclosing it in one of his larger hands.  
“Do you think I came out here to seduce you?” she shouted. “Came out to bang uglies in your fucking grandpop trailer? Hoping to get some kind of pity-fuck? Nuh-huh, John. That wasn’t the plan, original or otherwise.”

She wriggled her arm, trying to get him to release his grip, but he stood firm, pushing her back so she was out of reach.  
“You were upset,” he countered.  
This incensed her more and she swung with her other fist, knowing it would end up in his other hand but hoping nonetheless to land a punch. 

It didn’t. 

_Why do I even bother?_ she thought, huffing, trying to pull out of his grip.  
John had always been so much better at martial arts than she was and he was about a foot taller. He didn’t have to do anything in particular except block her and he knew her well enough to know that by consistently blocking her every move, she would work herself into such a temper that she would finally lash out and – 

She tried delivering a sharp kick, but he just swung her around so her back was against his chest, with her fists still firmly encased in his hands. Using his superior strength, he crossed his arms across her front, enclosing her in a kind of Wick-ian straitjacket. 

She wriggled, but he squeezed tighter; she felt the ripple of firm muscle and smelled the faint scent of his soap and aftershave.  
“Anna,” he said in her ear, “Please stop. I invited you back inside so we can talk about this.”  
“You never want to talk about this shit,” she muttered.  
“Well, we can talk about it now,” offered John.

She twisted so she could turn her face to look at his.  
“It sickens me that you’ve moved on, John. Not because I hate your girlfriend or I’m jealous of your stupid house – though, yeah, get yourself someone your own age, you dickwad – but because I _can’t_. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but I can’t. Why are you so happy and I’m so not?”

Up close, she saw the little wrinkles around his eyes. From a distance, John seemed to have aged little, his skin still smooth, the same lanky, loping walk he had as a teen, but up close she saw the thousand tiny lines, the grey hairs, the healed scars, like hairline cracks in a vase. He looked at her, his brow furrowed in concentration, and as always impatient for his response, she tried to shrug a, “Well?” in his grip.

“I’m happiest when I manage to block everything else out,” he answered, his voice deep, earnest. “I’m sorry I can do that better than you, Annie. I really am.”  
“Sucks to be me,” she replied drily.  
They didn’t move; John wrapped around her like a cloak, Anna tense as a wire.

Without looking around, she heard him swallow again, pause, then he said -  
“I have to ask ... Do you still, eh, do you still have feelings for me, Quinn?”

A thousand things flashed through her brain, the synapses crackling and fizzing.  
_No,_ she thought.  
She allowed herself to go limp, causing John to reflexively pull her tighter. His head bent to hers and his face dipped into her hair. His breath fluttered against her cheek, she could almost sense his stubble, so close was he. His lips moved, as though he wanted to same something and the sensation of being this close – this close – made Anna light-headed and she felt something ripple through him in response.  
“Annie,” he breathed and she didn’t know if it was a warning or a plea.

It was a moment of closeness they had shared a thousand times, squashed together in narrow beds, thrown up against each other in tight spaces -  
_No fucking way, you bastard,_ she thought fiercely. _Not now. Not anymore. This has got to stop. I'm not going to be the one that gets played._

So she moved lithely beneath him, pressing her butt against his crotch, feeling him harden through the thin cotton of his pants. Twisting her upper body, one of his arms slipped down and inadvertently covered her breast and she let it rest there, stopping suddenly when she heard him gasp, aware of what she’d done.  
They stood there for a couple of seconds, both waiting for the other to make the next move.  
Anna used the opportunity and pushed herself free, spinning around to look at him.  
“I will always have feelings for you, John,” she said clearly. “You’re the closest thing I have left to family. But I find ...”  
She didn’t try to hide her irony. “... But I find I’m _happiest_ when I block you out.”

Anna stood up straight as his shoulders slumped. She didn't look at him in case that meant she would see that he knew she was lying.  
Instead, she said in an insolent tone, “So I’m going to bed. Not driving back to the city at this hour. This dump must have some kind of Murphy bed or pull-out, right? You can sleep there, I’m taking the bed because – well, fuck you.”  
She pulled her gun out of her waistband.  
“And don’t think about ... about any funny business.”  
She waved the weapon in the direction of his crotch.  
“Because next time I _will_ use this.”  
“Of course not,” John said, dropping his eyes. “We can sort this thing with the contract out tomorrow.”  
“For once and for all,” she agreed.

He nodded and turned to the small table, flipping it up so he could pull out the benches to make a narrow single bed. Anna watched him for a moment then, satisfied, turned to take the few steps down towards the bedroom door.  
“I would never, ever hurt you, Quinn,” he said with his back still turned to her.  
“You keep saying that,” Anna replied smartly. 

She went into the bedroom, shut the door and turned the key in the lock.  
“You keep saying that,” she repeated, “and yet you keep doing it.”


	19. Chapter 19

Anna woke to the smell of coffee. 

She sat upright, instantly awake, something that had always annoyed John when they’d had to share a bed. Something in her subconscious would flip a switch, and she was suddenly alert, ready to go, while he used to roll under the blanket, groaning.  
This had never changed and now the inner switch had been flipped by the gurgle of a coffee-maker and the unmistakeable bitter smell. 

She rolled out of the bed and opened the door a crack. John was outside the trailer: she could hear him talking on his phone. Clad in nothing but her shirt and underwear, she scurried the three steps into the tiny bathroom, turning sideways to get in the door.

 _Holy shit,_ Anna thought.  
Her black make-up had smeared, making her look like a panda.  
_Thank God John didn’t see me like this,_ she thought.  
Whatever else had happened between them, she still had _some_ pride. 

She washed her face vigorously, then dried herself with one of his pristine towels, leaving black marks all over it. She hesitated a moment, then hid it at the bottom of the laundry bag that was squashed next to the sink. Hopefully she would be far away before he discovered it. She heard him say goodbye outside, so she bolted for the bedroom to get dressed before he caught sight of her.  
_It’s ridiculous,_ she thought, pulling up her jeans. _He’s seen me naked a million times._

The difference was, she realised, back then she was slapping him off, telling him to get a life and stop being so pathetic.  
Now she was the one who turned up in his shitty trailer, snivelling and pouting because he had got a life and she hadn’t.  
_You’re an idiot,_ she thought.  
She almost felt sorry for John.  
Almost.  
........  
When she went into the living area, John looked up at her enquiringly. She slid into the seat opposite her and he pushed a cup of coffee towards her. It was just the way she drank it: white, no sugar. She sipped it, nodded a silent thanks.

“I know how you feel,” he said.  
“Sorry?”  
“What you said? About how you think I can put it all in a box in my head and keep a lid on it?”  
She looked at him, waiting for him to go on.  
“Mostly – mostly I can,” he picked up his cup but didn’t put it to his lips. “When I met Helen, I thought I could put it behind me and move on. I guess I thought I did.”

He exhaled slowly and drank his coffee, staring out the window.  
Anna waited.  
John ran his fingers through his hair, still looking beyond the scratched glass at the garden outside.  
“The only time I sleep soundly is with you in the room,” he said.  
He laughed soundlessly.  
“Ironic, huh? I never slept through the night when I was married; not once. Every creak, every rustle woke me. Sometimes I’d get up, get my gun and check the house from top to bottom, just in case. Because there was always that fear – it was going to catch up on me and Helen was bound to become collateral damage. But you –“

He looked at her, stared at her with his chillingly direct gaze.  
“You could look after yourself. And you would look after me. Something inside me could let go and I could sleep.”  
He gestured at the trailer, at the door, the windows.  
“Everywhere I go, I make myself a prison and I still can’t sleep. But last night you – last night you sneaked in through the fucking skylight, tried to beat the shit out of me, made me take the pull-out bed with my feet dangling over the end. And you know what?”  
“What?” she said, knowing the answer.  
“I slept like a log.”

He drank his coffee, stood and picked up the pot to re-fill his cup.  
“So in answer to your question: how do I do it? Not very well. Despite all appearances, not very well. Does that make you feel better?”  
“A little bit,” she admitted.  
“I thought I was doing you a favour,” he said, filling her cup as well, though she had barely drunk from it. “From where I was, it looked like you were getting your life in order.”  
“Yeah, it sure looked that way,” Anna said bitterly.  
“You had a good thing,” John said, sitting back down. “That guy seemed to ... love you. Isn’t that what you wanted?”  
“Was that what _you_ wanted?” she shot back. “For me to find someone else?”  
“No,” he contradicted. “I wanted you to be _happy_ , Annie. You looked happy. All the time you were out of the business, studying and working – you never had anyone in your life. Then you finally hook up with a decent guy and I just thought – I just thought it was what you deserved.” His voice rose questioningly. “So why did you go and ...”  
“... fuck it up?” she finished.

He shrugged.  
“Do you ever feel remorse?” Anna asked abruptly.  
John looked at her. “What do you mean?”  
"We were trained not to feel remorse,” she said, rattling off the lines they had learned when they first started. “It's a job. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. No civilians, no children, no animals. That's the codex. Anyone you kill or injure knew what they were getting into when they picked up their gun. Right?"  
“I guess,” John said wryly.  
"Yeah, they trained us well," she said. ""Did you ever think about it, John? Don’t you ever think about what they did – Michael Black, Kay Chen, Winston, the Agency? We were vulnerable; young and stupid. They took us in and became our family. They trained us and they brainwashed us, they reprogrammed us to accept a new reality. That this – all of this is okay. This is our normality. But is this normal?"

He opened his mouth to reply but she stopped him, holding up her hand.  
"What are we? Serial killers? Sociopaths? _Psychopaths?_ " she demanded.  
“I don’t know,” he said softly.  
“We’re not good enough for other people,” she said. “We’re not good enough for good people, like Helen and Dan, _that’s_ why we don’t fucking sleep.”

She pushed the coffee away, as though it suddenly disgusted her.  
"It's just that ... while I was working, I had no regrets,” she said, fixing him with her eyes to make sure he understood. “ It was what we did and I understood why we did it. As soon as I stopped ... well, then it didn't make much sense any more. Back in the real world, you have to hide who you are and not think about what you did. It's like those Russian dolls – you know the ones that sit inside each other?"  
John nodded.  
"It's like you put this version of yourself into another doll and that outside doll is what you present to the world. But the one inside keeps knocking against you, keeps banging to get out."

She drew in a deep breath.  
"The only way I could stop the banging, stop the thinking, was to return to it."  
"It's easier to deal with it when you're dealing with it," he said softly.  
She looked up to grin at him.  
"So you do know what I mean," she said.  
He nodded.  
"There's no escape for us from this, is there?" Anna asked grimly.  
“Yes, there is,” he replied. “We managed it before. We can learn.”

Anna scoffed silently but didn’t say anything.  
“We’ll go to the Agency and sort this out,” he said. He reached across a laid a hand on hers.  
Anna looked down at his long fingers, the tiny dark hairs on the back of his hand.  
“And then?”  
“First things first,” he said.  
“So first we have to stop you trying to assassinate me,” Anna said with a tight smile.  
John smiled.  
“Exactly,” he said. “What’s the bounty, by the way?”  
“You were being fucking cheap,” she complained. “It’s 250K.”  
“It would’ve been much cheaper to do it myself,” he pointed out.  
“See, that’s how I really know you’re not behind this,” she grumbled. “You’re too much of a damned tightwad.”  
“Why pay someone else when I could do it myself?” he quipped, standing up. 

He picked up her cup and put it in the sink to wash it.  
“Dream on,” she said, picking up a dishcloth beside him.  
She took up the washed cup and wiped it swiftly dry. “I could’ve killed you twice last night before you even realized I was there.”  
John laughed aloud.  
“Maybe I just felt sorry for you,” he said. “I told you I don’t sleep. I was just faking it.”  
She snorted and dried the other cup, putting them on the shelf over the sink with the others. 

“I missed this,” he said, pretending to be busy, wringing out the cloth.  
“Yeah, I bet,” she said. “Who wouldn't miss this weird shit? So you gonna tell your poor girlfriend you had a strange woman in your trailer last night?”  
“She’s not my girlfriend,” he said quietly. “Not any more. I phoned her this morning to end it. It’s not fair.”  
“Shit, Johnny, I’m sorry,” Anna said. “The thing I said about her being a bit young – that was a low blow. You didn’t have to go _break up_ with her.”  
He paused. “Like you said, we’re not good enough for good people.”  
She raised an eyebrow as she folded the cloth.  
“And you did it this morning already? That’s harsh,” she said.  
Anna shook her head admonishingly.  
“She’s an early riser,” he said. “She’d already been to her yoga class when I – “  
He caught her eye, saw the delight cross her face: her blue eyes lit up with mischief.  
“Don’t say anything, Anna,” he warned.  
“Yoga class? Her yoga class? Did you dump her when she was on her way to pick up a spinach shake?” she teased. “Aw, shit, John. Did she make you do yoga, too?”  
She flicked the dishcloth at him, laughing raucously. “Oh God – did you two have bendy tantric sex? Followed by a nice vegan smoothie?”  
“Shut up, Quinn,” he said, unable to keep his mouth straight. 

He pushed her gently and escaped into the tiny bathroom, escaped from her mocking laughter.  
“You still miss this?” she called after him. “Like a hole in the head, huh?”  
He didn’t answer; just shut the door with a wide grin on his face.


	20. Chapter 20

They arranged to meet at the Continental; Anna left with few niceties, telling him to hurry the fuck up and shave because Charon wouldn’t let him over the threshold looking like a bum.   
He watched her sprint lightly down the avenue towards his gate, to where she’d probably parked her car on the road.

He drove into the city, handed the keys of his car to the hotel’s valet and walked through the glass doors in to the high-ceilinged lobby.  
Mr Charon watched him approach the desk but his calm expression betrayed nothing.  
"A pleasure to see you again, Mr Wick," he said.  
John smiled. He had always liked the concierge.  
“Likewise,” John replied.  
"For one night or for two?" asked Mr Charon.  
"One, please," he replied.

Mr Charon tapped his keyboard, and then hesitated delicately  
“I note with interest that Miss Quinn is also currently in residence,” he said. “Forgive me the question, Mr Wick, but do you require a key to a room in her vicinity or would a room on a different floor be preferable?”  
John raised an eyebrow but Charon looked at him with a purposely blank expression.  
“I’ll take a room in her vicinity,” he replied, resisting the urge to shuffle awkwardly.  
“Very well, sir,” the concierge replied, sliding a key across the desk.   
John bent to pick up his bag.  
“She’s in 207,” Charon said, looking at his screen.  
John glanced at him, but the other man was studiously ignoring him. The key in his hand was for room 208.   
“Do enjoy your stay, Mr Wick,” the concierge said, granting him a beatific smile.

They had arranged to meet at 4 pm and Anna was waiting for him when he came down.   
She was sitting at a small table, flicking through one of the glossy magazines that Winston kept artfully scattered on the occasional tables.   
As John approached, he saw a man at a neighbouring table adjust his tie, tug his jacket, readying himself to speak to her. He looked up when he heard John's steps and drew back, pretending to answer his phone.   
She raised her head and he saw that she'd toned down the heavy eyeliner, but her lips and nails were painted a dark red, which – together with her dark hair – made her pale skin seem almost translucent. She was thinner than he knew her and she looked almost fragile, like a statue of some plaster saint in The Continental's church-like lobby. Something always stirred inside him when he caught sight of her without her knowing. It made him see her with other eyes, as a stranger would see her: her quick, clever face. The shock of dark hair, the slim leg that tapped silently, unable to be still. Her pale skin, down her neck to her -

"Ready?" she asked, standing up.   
He nodded, looked away as she grabbed her bag, and followed her outside to the waiting car.  
"I can drive," she said, as he walked around to the driver's side.  
"I know," he said. "Doesn't mean you should, though."  
She sighed martyredly and got in beside him. 

He drove them as quickly as he could through the busy streets, pulling swiftly in to the entrance of the Agency's underground garage.   
John rolled down the window and tossed a gold coin into the hat of the beggar sitting outside and he reached behind, pressing some button or pulling some lever that opened the door. The beggar silently accompanied them to the elevator and punched in a code, sending them off with a silent wave before returning to his post.

The Agency was pretty much as John remembered it, the same stuffy smell, the telex machines, the row of women working the switchboards. Back when he and Anna started out, the atmosphere had been more relaxed, almost like walking into a clubhouse. They'd hung around in the staff kitchen waiting for an assignment – any assignment - drinking coffee with the younger receptionists and getting a telling-off from the older ones, who called them children and said they'd be sure to keep them off the alert list if anything came in – how could they send two innocents like the lanky boy and the nervy girl out to do grown-ups' work?   
Now things were more serious, more professional. John doubted that any of them hung around chatting over their weak coffee in the staff's tiny kitchen.

"Mr Wick?" said a voice.   
He turned and came face to face with a man as tall as he was. But this man was almost as round as a barrel, something that was easy to overlook as he was dressed in an exquisitely tailored suit.  
"We've spoken on the phone. Frank Dubarry."  
John extended his hand.   
Dubarry had the look of a retired wrestler; though he was softly-spoken, John didn't doubt that he was someone to be reckoned with. As soon as Dubarry had taken over management of The Agency a decade previously, he had ruthlessly updated its procedures, trimming it down from a home away from home for idle agents to a place where contracts were swiftly dispatched and payment uncompromisingly collected, a well-oiled machine that buzzed with the clack of typewriters and the rattling of fax machines.

"And this is-?" the portly man asked politely.  
"Anna Quinn," she supplied.  
He looked at her sharply, scrutinising her dark hair.  
"We need to update your file picture," he remarked. Smiling, he added, "If you would be so kind, I would ask you to join me in my office, please."

They followed him.  
"So," Dubarry said, shuffling some papers, "Mr Wick, you have come to cancel a contract on Miss Quinn and you have brought Miss Quinn to drive home this cancellation."  
"Yes," John answered simply.  
Dubarry silently studied some papers before clearing his throat and saying, "Hmm. This case, it's a little unusual, I'm afraid."  
"What do you mean?" John asked, leaning forward.  
“The first contract," Dubarry said, consulting his notes, "was an unfortunate error on our part, a glitch when we transferred our files to a new software system – "  
"Was anyone else affected?" Anna wanted to know.  
Dubarry hesitated. "No, actually, you were the only one. The contract was accidentally activated."  
"Interesting," she said sarcastically. "And the last contract? Was it _accidentally_ activated again?"  
She made air quotes, her fingers slicing the air viciously.

"Well," Dubarry said, brightening a little, "That's where things get really interesting. This contract was called in by John Wick on three nights ago, confirmed biometrically and the deposit lodged from an account in Switzerland."  
"Confirmed biometrically?" John echoed.  
"That means that once it was lodged, a fingerprint scan confirmed the contract and it was given the green light."  
"But I didn't open any contracts," he said, feeling suddenly queasy.  
Dubarry stared at him, a pleasant smile on his lips.  
"But it was confirmed biometrically," he repeated.  
"Basically, what you're saying is that it had to be John," Anna said.  
"Yes."  
"Maybe your software was hacked?" John suggested.  
The Agency manager shook his head firmly.   
"No," he said. "Impossible. Absolutely impossible."  
"Nothing's impossible," said the man opposite him.  
"Well, this is. This software is at the cutting edge of encryption technology."

John began to feel irritated, desperate.   
Anna had turned to stare at him, her blue eyes lasering into him, an eyebrow raised in expectation of an explanation.   
"I didn't call the contract," he said, lowering his voice so it wouldn't belie his slight panic. "I insist you check the possibility of a hacking, either at The Agency itself or by the company that installed the system."  
"Mr Wick," said the manager, "it is more likely that you suffered a bout of amnesia than that someone hacked our system. I'm being honest with you, even though you don't want to hear it. Now maybe it is time for you to be honest with us."  
He continued to smile the same calm smile.   
"I'm telling you," Dubarry said, "it was biometrically confirmed. By your fingerprint."

John stood up, his hand hovered over his belt, ready to pull his gun.   
"Check for hacking," he said in a low voice. "Call whoever you think needs to be called, but get some techie or nerd or geek in here check your damned system."  
Dubarry stood up behind his desk and raised a hand.   
In the other he held a gun.  
"Mr Wick," he said with a genial smile, "I would advise against it."  
Anna stood up and Mr Dubarry pointed the gun briefly at her to send a signal.   
She raised both arms, leaned over to John and pulled his hand down.

"Open another contract, John," she said. She looked up at him, her hand open against his ribs, fingers splayed like a starfish so he could feel the warmth of her skin against his chest. "Open another contract on me so we can see what happens."  
Anna patted his chest and dropped her hand.   
John nodded slowly at Dubarry, who'd already put his gun away, as though he'd never had it in his hand. Gallantly, he opened the door of his office and escorted them to the front desk, where he called over one of the receptionists from her typewriter.

"Mr Wick wishes to open a contract," Mr Dubarry said.  
The receptionist sat at the computer at the front desk.  
"Recipient?" she asked.  
"Anna Quinn," he said.   
The woman at the computer glanced up, looked at Anna, then obediently typed in her name.  
"Open or closed?"  
"Open."  
"Denomination?"  
"One hundred thousand."  
Anna snorted.  
"Verification?"  
John gave his number and the receptionist placed a small electronic pad on the desk.  
"Fingerprint scan," she said. “If you please.”  
John placed his finger on the pad.   
The device beeped.  
"I'm sorry," the receptionist said. "There was a problem reading your print. Can you reposition your finger?"  
John did, pressing it down carefully.   
Mr Dubarry watched, his smile replaced by a slight frown.  
The computer beeped again.  
"Your middle finger maybe?" the receptionist asked helpfully. "Or the index finger on the other hand?"  
John tried both. 

Then Anna leaned in and pulled the touchpad over.  
"Try mine," she said, and the receptionist pressed a couple of keys. “Pretend I want to open a contract. On Wick. _Fifty_ thousand,” she said, pulling a face at him.  
The fingerprint reader beeped reproachfully again as Anna tried each of her digits.   
“I’m sorry,” the receptionist said. “This is very irregular.”  
Anna gave the little gadget back to the receptionist and turned to the two men.  
"Yeah," she said, shrugging casually. "I'd say that pretty much means that you've been hacked, Mr Dubarry."


End file.
